Cities Most Likely To Gain A Pro Sports Team Via Relocation Or Expansion By 2028

[ThePhun1]

Originally Posted by Pedestrian

Serious question to sports knowledgeable/interested forumers here: How long will the 49ers be willing to play in the ridiculous, hard to get to stadium-in-nowheresville they built in Santa Clara? They persist in using the SF-referential name but it can take hours to get to or from a game for a San Franciscan so I doubt many bother. Unless the team gets a lot better real quick, can this last?

The rather less than full stands at Levi Stadium:


https://www.sfchronicle.com/49ers/ar...e-12189598.php

The Niners have been down as of late. Yeah, the stadium site sucks but there's very little free land in San Francisco and what land there is, is very expensive. Although I do wonder why they didn't rebuild at Candlestick Point, maybe it was too cold. The Warriors found a way to build a stadium in San Francisco.

But they don't have the only virtually empty stadium in the NFL. The NFL has also lost some popularity, in part because of the antics of Colin Kaepernick but also for a number of other reasons, including it being much cheaper to just watch at home or at the sports bar than get to the stadium, pay to park, overpriced concessions, large crowds (to park, get in, bathroom), etc...

[ThePhun1]

Originally Posted by Steely Dan

thanks to the WGN super-station of decades past, the cubs ABSOLUTELY have a profoundly larger fan base than the sox on a national level, by like several orders of magnitude.

i'm talking about strictly within the chicagoland market itself. things are fairly well-balanced, with an obvious (though FAR from absolute) north-south divide.

again, the numbers don't lie:

CHICAGOLAND:

county ------ % cubs/% sox

mchenry county: 52%/28%
lake county (IL): 50%/30%
kane county: 50%/36%
kendall county: 46%/39%
dupage county: 44%/40%
grundy county: 41%/39%
cook county: 40%/38%
porter county: 40%/41%
lake county (IN): 39%/43%
kankakee county: 37%/45%
will county: 37%/47%

kenosha county is brewers country. once you cross the "cheddar curtain", majority allegiances switch over to wisconsin teams.

source: http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2...eball-map.html



the big one to pay attention to on the chart above is cook county.

cook county has more people than the rest of those counties combined, and it's a pretty dead even split at 40% vs. 38%.

it doesn't matter what your impressions are, if you had lived here for over 4 decades, with both white sox and cubs sides of your family stretching back to the days of your great-grandfathers*, you'd know.



(*) fun family baseball anecdote. in the old days, the whole northside/southside thing wasn't a thing yet, because the cubs played on the west side in those days, and the sox on the southside. my great grandfather lived on the northside, but LOVED baseball. he would occasionally tell the tale that he decided to become a cubs fan because he was once treated rudely by a ticket taker while attempting to attend a sox game. he swore the sox off from that moment on and forever more the entire maternal side of my family would be cubs fans to this very day.

No I believe you, with you being a local and all but it is hard busting up a stereotype.

[ozone]

I have serious doubts that the A’s are going to stay in Oakland. They should move to Sacramento which already supports a solid minor league team and is close enough to the East Bay that it could retain a lot of its fan base. On the other hand most people around here support the SF Giants. But I’m sure their loyalty could be changed to a local team. I think if Oakland doesn’t work out the owners are looking at moving to the South Bay. Maybe that wouldn’t be as big of mistake that moving the 49rs to Santa Clara was but who knows?

[suburbanite]

Originally Posted by Boisebro

I was hoping the new Seattle NHL franchise would be called the Metropolitans for old time's sake.

No name has been publicly announced yet. I like the Metropolitans as well but keep in mind there is a Metropolitan Division in the NHL.

I feel like the team should have a marine-based name to match with the Mariners and Seahawks. Unfortunately they probably won't be able to match their colours with the other local teams due to their neighbours in Vancouver already using a similar scheme.

[Pedestrian]

Originally Posted by ThePhun1

I do wonder why they didn't rebuild at Candlestick Point, maybe it was too cold.

Too cold for football? A Green Bay fan or two might have a response to that. Yeah, it wasn't ideal for baseball, but football?

From what I could tell the walk away from Candlestick had more to do with an out-of-town owner thinking he could gin up a more enthusiastic fan base in Silicon Valley--one more willing to pay for the usual luxury suites etc. But now the option is gone--Candlestick is programmed for redevelopment into housing and more.

But the move doesn't seem to be working; hence my question. Will the Yorks of Ohio give up on Santa Clara within a decade and move the team beyond the Bay?

[suburbanite]

One thing I find odd is how there is a massive contiguous chunk of the Southeast U.S. with no pro baseball. Kentucky, Tennessee, North Carolina, and South Carolina create this huge gap between the dense group of teams in the Northeast, and the Georgia and Florida teams.

When I was in Nashville it seemed like support was split pretty evenly between Atlanta and St. Louis, with Cincinnati in third place. I think North Carolina has pretty strong support for college baseball, so it seems like a relatively prime target for a team.

[Pedestrian]

Originally Posted by ozone

I have serious doubts that the A’s are going to stay in Oakland. They should move to Sacramento which already supports a solid minor league team and is close enough to the East Bay that it could retain a lot of its fan base. On the other hand most people around here support the SF Giants. But I’m sure their loyalty could be changed to a local team. I think if Oakland doesn’t work out the owners are looking at moving to the South Bay. Maybe that wouldn’t be as big of mistake that moving the 49rs to Santa Clara was but who knows?

The team is blocked from moving to the South Bay because MLB says the South Bay fan base belongs to the Giants is my understanding.

But you may be right that they will leave Oakland. If they do, Oakland has only themselves to blame. The team has clearly gone the extra mile to find a modern home in Oaktown. But the city isn't "playing ball".

[Sun Belt]

Originally Posted by ThePhun1

The Niners have been down as of late. Yeah, the stadium site sucks but there's very little free land in San Francisco and what land there is, is very expensive. Although I do wonder why they didn't rebuild at Candlestick Point, maybe it was too cold. The Warriors found a way to build a stadium in San Francisco..

An 18,000 seat basketball arena has a much smaller footprint and has 41 home games often held on weekdays around 7pm local time and can hold many other events and concerts and tend to be located in urban environments.

A humongous 60,000 seat football stadium has 8 home games usually on a Sunday and sits empty for the rest of the year and typically are located in suburban locations due to the culture of football like tailgating all day.

[mhays]

Basketball usually plays in arenas, not stadiums. Arenas are much smaller.

That San Francisco pic isn't during a game...one team isn't on the sideline, and it looks like warmups are happening.

Sacramento might be a good idea for the As. Though it flies under the radar Sacramento is probably big enough. I agree that it could retain some Oakland fans at least for TV and occasional weekend excursions. It's too far for a weeknight.

[Sun Belt]

Looks like the 49ers sold out most [all?] games in 2017? It's just that people weren't showing up to the games.

http://www.espn.com/nfl/attendance

[Steely Dan]

Originally Posted by Sun Belt

A humongous 60,000 seat football stadium has 8 home games usually on a Sunday and sits empty for the rest of the year and typically are located in suburban locations due to the culture of football like tailgating all day.

what's interesting though is that roughly half of NFL stadiums (15/31) are located in the downtown or downtown-adjacent areas of their central cities.

atlanta
baltimore
charlotte
chicago
cincinnati
cleveland
denver
detroit
indianapolis
jacksonville
minneapolis
new orleans
pittsburgh
seattle
nashville

[ThePhun1]

Originally Posted by suburbanite

One thing I find odd is how there is a massive contiguous chunk of the Southeast U.S. with no pro baseball. Kentucky, Tennessee, North Carolina, and South Carolina create this huge gap between the dense group of teams in the Northeast, and the Georgia and Florida teams.

When I was in Nashville it seemed like support was split pretty evenly between Atlanta and St. Louis, with Cincinnati in third place. I think North Carolina has pretty strong support for college baseball, so it seems like a relatively prime target for a team.

Nashville and Charlotte are the only markets that could support a team and they'd have a hard time competing. Both are maxed out with two sports teams imo.

Norfolk/Virginia Beach could also but it'd be a struggle.

[ThePhun1]

Originally Posted by Pedestrian

The team is blocked from moving to the South Bay because MLB says the South Bay fan base belongs to the Giants is my understanding.

But you may be right that they will leave Oakland. If they do, Oakland has only themselves to blame. The team has clearly gone the extra mile to find a modern home in Oaktown. But the city isn't "playing ball".

There's no room in the Bay for two teams, at least as long as the San Francisco side gets a disproportionate amount of attention.

[LosAngelesSportsFan]

Originally Posted by Sun Belt

Looks like the 49ers sold out most [all?] games in 2017? It's just that people weren't showing up to the games.

http://www.espn.com/nfl/attendance

Ya, the tickets are sold but no ones going. Go to emptyseastsgalore on twitter and scroll to see the huge attendance issues for many teams in the NFL and MLB

[ThePhun1]

Originally Posted by mhays

Basketball usually plays in arenas, not stadiums. Arenas are much smaller.

That San Francisco pic isn't during a game...one team isn't on the sideline, and it looks like warmups are happening.

Sacramento might be a good idea for the As. Though it flies under the radar Sacramento is probably big enough. I agree that it could retain some Oakland fans at least for TV and occasional weekend excursions. It's too far for a weeknight.

An arena can still be a stadium, which is why I used it as a catch all word. Not all arenas are even covered, it's just a modern invention. Many "arenas" look like open air theaters or stadiums.

[maru2501]

that white sox photo was not completely fair, since it was after a morning of snow. The cubs actually postponed their day game the same day and the sox went ahead and cleared the field. And it was about 30 degrees.. and it was a workday day game. Of course no one was there.

the sox do fine in good weather and on weekends

[Pedestrian]

Originally Posted by mhays

That San Francisco pic isn't during a game...one team isn't on the sideline, and it looks like warmups are happening.

The caption of the pic at its source: "The eastern stands at Levi's Stadium are almost empty as the second half of Sunday's game . . . ."

Probably at the end of half time.

[LosAngelesSportsFan]

Originally Posted by maru2501

that white sox photo was not completely fair, since it was after a morning of snow. The cubs actually postponed their day game the same day and the sox went ahead and cleared the field. And it was about 30 degrees.. and it was a workday day game. Of course no one was there.

the sox do fine in good weather and on weekends

i mean that was an outlier but they do often draw less than 15,000 a game..

A lot of teams are having major issues this year.. Miami, Oakland, White Sox, Oriels... Paid attendance numbers around 6 or 7000 a game? thats really unprecedented over the last couple decades

[Steely Dan]

Originally Posted by LosAngelesSportsFan

i mean that was an outlier but they do often draw less than 15,000 a game..

early in the season during an unusually chilly "spring" like the one we're having chicago this year (15-20 degrees below normal, for fuck's sake!), that's not at all uncommon.

if you look at the past 5 seasons, the sox have averaged ~21,000/game (placing them in the bottom 5 of MLB in average attendance for each of the last 5 years in a row), and once the weather warms up in the coming weeks and months, they'll probably balance out to somewhere around that number again by the end of the season, unless they catch fire and more fans bother to show up.

the white sox are a franchise in the doldrums right now. they've finished last or 2nd to last in their division for the past 5 years in a row, the last time they even potentially sniffed the playoffs was 2010, and the last time they actually made the payoffs was 2008. i don't know when the ship will be righted, but a decade-long playoff drought tends to put a damper on fan enthusiasm and ballpark attendance.

the sox fans are certainly there in chicagoland, in great numbers, they're just a cynical bunch who won't go to the ballpark and support their team just because.

sox fans need a reason to show up, whereas cubs fans will show up just to drink and be merry in america's largest outdoor bar, even if the team on the field is mediocre.

[BnaBreaker]

Originally Posted by ThePhun1

I somehow doubt the Grizzlies are Memphis when they've been there for 15-16 years and not even done so much as played for a title, let alone won one.

You're free to doubt all you like, but your doubt doesn't jive with reality. Sorry. And how many teams can say they've had a legitimate shot at a title over the past fifteen years? Seven? Eight? The Grizzlies hardly deserve to be singled out in that regard, particularly given the fact that over the past decade they've had a fairly significant amount of postseason success and up until this season had one of the longest active postseason streaks in the league while playing in the toughest division.

Unless you're the Green Bay Packers, no one is safe from a move. I don't even know how Memphis has a team, they must get a ton of TV money from the being close to Nashville and Little Rock (or is that a Mavs/Thunder market?). They may have close ties with the community but it doesn't change how small the market is and how little disposable income they have. That said, the NBA has a ton of small markets but along with New Orleans, Memphis is both the smallest and has among the highest percentage of people with little purchasing power.

Obviously Memphis is on the lower end in terms of metro size and income but it's still very much in the ballpark of quite a few other NBA markets such as OKC, New Orleans, Sacramento, Milwaukee etc. so again, why single out Memphis? NBA arenas, as you know, only hold about 17K people and they've only got to do that 41 times a year. So why you doubt that an MSA of 1.4 million couldn't handle that, I have no idea. It's one team. Memphis couldn't support another pro team, but it can and does support the Grizzlies. Over the past eight seasons they've been in the middle of the pack in terms of percentage of tickets sold, outperforming many much larger markets. So you keep harping on market size and income, but that hasn't really affected the results in the past like you seem to think.