Looking for the best city to cheer for the blue team over the red team?
Forbes magazine begged for attention as it often does with a new list. This gets personal, ranking 29 sports metro areas in the country by winning percentages and ticket prices compared to cost of living.
What do sports fans spend the most time grousing about? Above all else, it’s lousy teams or high ticket prices.
Woe is the fan forced to put up with both at once. Who wants to pay premium prices to sit in the stands and watch the losses mount? Fans in Miami know about that. Over the past year, the city’s four major sports teams–the Dolphins, Marlins, Heat and Panthers–have combined to win just 40% of their games while fans have forked over money for tickets and accouterments at the seventh-highest rate among 29 major sports metros.
As the Inquirer points out today, Philadelphia was neither among the 10 worst nor the three best – no others were ranked.
Worst
- Miami
- San Diego
- Indianapolis
- New York – “the second-highest prices in the country for teams that lose just over half their games, the Super Bowl champion Giants not withstanding.”
- Cincinnati
- Kansas City
- Charlotte
- Tampa Bay
- Cleveland
- Pittsburgh – “The Penguins reached the NHL finals last season, while the Steelers went a solid 10-6, but baseball’s Pirates are always rebuilding. The area’s median income is 20% below the average of the 29 major sports metros.”
It’s nice to be reminded that Philly does have a rich sports tradition – its own struggles aside – particularly when compared with New York and Pittsburgh. Still, Philly wasn’t ranked among the best.
Best
- Detroit – “only No. 17 in costs for a .612 winning percentage for its four teams, including the Stanley Cup champion Red Wings” (Good for Detroit, because they were recently listed by Forbes as among the 10 fastest dying cities)
- Houston – “third-cheapest prices for a .565 winning percentage”
- Bay Area – “so-so teams, but a high-income market with the ninth-lowest costs”
Of course, for every list Forbes does, the same evaluation is the result. Provocative, but mostly pointless and intellectually shallow – like something you could figure out at a bar – and a frustrating attempt at amping their page clicks, as there isn’t a single list, but rather necessary to click through each brief description. Lame Forbes. Plus, Yahoo Sports did the same damn thing in April, and the list doesn’t take into account changes or trends – their math only used last year’s successes, not over the past five years, perhaps.
Hey, though Chris Wink has a Twitter page, friends rag on me for not using it. I may not update, but I do follow – where I found this story, courtesy of Phillysports on Twitter.
Photo courtesy of Ball Hype.
