Sportstown, USA

May 10, 2013 By Leave a Comment

Top5sportsCities (3)
Sports fandom is often scoffed at by those not involved, but it’s in the same vein as one who doesn’t care about art glancing at a Monet and wondering what the big deal is. A game-winning touchdown for your team gives you a sense of happiness because something you can’t control went right. Better yet, if your team is local, it’s giving the people around you that very same feeling. There’s nothing else that brings you and your neighbor together like that and people are proud of their sports communities.

There’s a lot of back and forth on what is and isn’t a “good sports town.” It’s been debated ad nauseam. Even athletes are getting into the act, with former Texas slugger Josh Hamilton giving his own thoughts on the subject after a move to the division-rival Angels — “Texas, especially Dallas, has always been a football town,” he said, and added “it’s not a true baseball town.” It feels like a personal jab at every one of the Rangers fans in the Metroplex, and you can bet Rangers fans will never let him forget it.

So, with apologies to Josh, that’s an easy thing say, but can he prove it? We tried. We’ve taken various data points that come out of our industry (the secondary ticket market) and some attendance/capacity figures to try to determine what city really does get behind its sports teams. Since it’s an overall city ranking, we picked the 15 cities/metro areas that have each of an NFL, MLB and NBA team (we wanted to add NHL as well, but it would have cut the list down to 11) and went from there.

After indexing all the ticketing and attendance numbers from the last regular season in each league (2012 MLB, 2012 NFL, 2012-13 NBA) we got a clear winner, and one you might have expected: New York City. Ranking 4th in football, 1st in basketball and 3rd in baseball, the Big Apple was one of only two cities that ranked in the top 5 in every sport.

Here are the Top 5 and their scores:

100 – New York City

97.9 – Boston

97.7 – Dallas

90.2 – Chicago

82.0 – Philadelphia

 

We can go a bit deeper and look at the top 5 in each league that we looked at as well:

NBA

100 – New York City

91.6 – Miami

83.6 – Chicago

80.9 – Boston

75.5 – Oakland

NFL

100 – Dallas

87.9 – Chicago

81.8 – Boston

81.6 – New York City

77.6 – Washington D.C.

MLB

100 – Boston

86.9 – Dallas

86.7 – New York City

86.6 – Philadelphia

81.5 – Detroit

 

What to take from this

-  While Dallas would still be #1 with all NFL cities involved, many teams that would be ranked high on this list (see Lakers, SF Giants) aren’t included because the cities don’t have all three of the major sports we used.

-  The #1 indicator of support will always be success. Cities that were closer to the bottom of this list (Phoenix, Cleveland) haven’t seen too much success recently and the support will therefore wane over the years.

-  Big markets dominate. It’s hard to say any city that has 3-4 major professional sports teams isn’t a big market, but NYC and Chicago are definitely bigger than Denver and Cleveland and it shows.

Interesting facts

NFL: The Bears had the highest ticket price in the NFL last season and were one of seven teams in this group to have attendance over its official capacity. The Dolphins were last in attendance of these 15 teams by a longshot.

NBA: The biggest difference between 1st place and 2nd was the Knicks over the rest of the NBA. Attendance was quite low in Detroit but fans are packed into the arena in Chicago and Dallas. Tickets were really, really cheap in Philadelphia and Minnesota last season.

MLB: The Yankees have a TON of tickets sold on the secondary market, but only had about 87% capacity last season (it’s much lower this season as well). The Red Sox had over 100% capacity last season but have since seen their sell-out streak come to an end. Dallas was 3rd in baseball, so Josh Hamilton doesn’t know what he’s talking about.

Filed Under: Uncategorized

A Little League Powerhouse

August 27, 2012 By Leave a Comment

As MLB gets into gear for the World Series there has been hundreds of little league sluggers  in the middle of their own World Series. Most of us usually tune into the Little League World Series (LLWS) around this time when it’s coming down to the final games. What we casual viewers don’t realize is that these 11 and 12 year old athletes have been going at it since mid-June. If you ever played little league baseball growing up you surely remember when the season ended and the All-Stars were selected, this is the beginning of a number of qualifying tournaments on the road to the LLWS.

It starts with District Tournaments. These are the tournament’s most of us past all-star players are familiar with, a weekend of local BBQ and some fun in the field. Little did we know we may be playing the next LLWS contender or better yet it could be us?  After the double-elimination District tournaments the teams head into Sectionals and State tournaments at the end of July. Out of all the teams in the US only 52 will make it past the State tournaments. Once the state champions have been decided the road to the LLWS begins to heat up as only eight teams will make it past the Regional Tournaments.

The LLWS is made up of 8 US regional teams (Great Lakes, Mid-Atlantic, Midwest, New England, Northwest, Southeast, Southwest, and the West) and 8 international region teams (Canada, Japan, Mexico, Asia-Pacific, Caribbean, European, Latin American, and the Middle East-Africa). Each year at Little League Baseball’s international headquarters in South Williamsport, PA., the 8 US teams compete for a championship slot against one of the international teams. This year’s LLWS brought the Southeast region Tennessee team to face off with the international squad from Japan that proved to be a truly remarkable group of players.

The Kitasuna Little League team from Tokyo was one of 750 teams in Japan that started down the LLWS road but the only team to make it to the end. Japan topped off a string of impressive performances with a huge win against the Tennessee team as they won by mercy rule in the 5th inning 12-2. Your TicketCity play comes in the form of a little league slugger that put on a performance most big league players can’t produce. Number 10 for the Japan squad, Noriatsu Osaka, went 4-4 with three home runs and a triple.

Just to put the LLWS in perspective, in the course of a 162-game major league season there will be a total of 2,430 games played. The entire LLWS tournament process will host over 37,000 games worldwide with a majority of the games taking place within a span of eight weeks. So kudos to Japan and all the little league teams for sticking it out and putting on some great baseball for the entire world to enjoy.

The TicketCity Play of the Week:

 

Filed Under: Uncategorized

A Team With A New Dream

August 13, 2012 By Leave a Comment

A few weeks before the London Olympics began, one of today’s greatest NBA players came forth and made a gutsy statement. It was Kobe Bryant and his statement went something like, “The 2012 Dream Team would beat the legendary 1992 Dream Team.” As confident as Kobe may have been in making that call, the only thing I can say about it is that I would love to see that game. Whether the 2012 USA team could beat the official Dream Team or not, one thing is for certain: there was no team in the London Olympics that could beat the highly-talented 2012 squad.

The USA Basketball team entered the London Olympics with a roster so impressive even the non-basketball enthusiast had to tune in for a game or two. With guys like Kobe Bryant, LeBron James, Kevin Durant, Carmelo Anthony and Russell Westbrook, this “New Dream Team” featured some of the most explosive players the NBA has ever seen. Through their eight-game schedule one could see why Kobe’s statement may not have been as outlandish as everyone thought in the beginning. The group of NBA all-stars found their groove early taking out France and Tunisia by more than 25 points before a truly remarkable display against Nigeria, winning 156 – 73. Lithuania gave the US team its first close call as they squeaked out a 99 – 94 win.

The U.S. managed to get back on track against Argentina, then in the quarterfinals as we matched our b-ball favorites up against Australia, who the U.S. managed to dismantle by 33 points to move into the semifinals. Knocking out Argentina again 109 – 83, the U.S. was pitted again Spain, who also has some high-quality NBA talent. The gold medal game would be the second close call for USA in the London Olympics, but the star-studded managed to come out on top 107 – 100 to bring home some bragging rights and the 2012 gold medal.

Back to Kobe’s pre-Olympic statement, the 2012 team was no doubt the best team at the London Olympics, but were they better than that 1992 team that combined some of the greatest players of all time? Larry Bird, Magic Johnson, and oh yeah, that one guy… Michael Jordan was his name? In a brief statistic comparison the answer is a no. I will be the first to say that just comparing statistics in any sport doesn’t mean much but in this comparison we will never know for sure, so stats is all we have and they don’t lie. Yes, both teams went undefeated and won the Gold but the 1992 team did it beating their opponents by an average of 44 points with the highest margin of defeat at 79. Not to take anything away from Lithuania, but the 2012 U.S. team barely managed a victory in that game. I think it’s safe to say we may never see another team like the great 1992 Dream Team, but we will let this 2012 group of young greats slide in and have the slot as the second greatest Dream Team…for now at least.

The TicketCity play of the week goes out to the 2012 USA Olympic basketball team and their feat to add another gold medal to the list. Congrats to them and enjoy this compilation of highlights from the London Olympics.

Filed Under: NBA, Uncategorized

An Olympic Great

August 6, 2012 By Leave a Comment

The 2012 London Olympics mark the end of the best Olympian the world has ever seen. The U.S. swimmer, Michael Phelps, will no doubt be most remembered for his impeccable performance at the Beijing Olympics in 2008 where he dominated the pool and took home a record-breaking eight gold medals. The 2012 London Olympics did not compare to his Beijing performance, but they certainly made for a great Olympic exit.

Prior to the 2012 Olympics, Phelps made it clear that he was not looking to repeat or attempt to beat his eight gold medal performance. I am sure the thought of this being his last Olympic run was on his mind well before the year arrived, and enjoying the experience and the events he loved allowed him to have a phenomenal last go at being the best.

The London Olympics have offered many highlight reel swims by the 27-year-old Phelps, but the one that stands out to me, as I am sure it does to Phelps as well, is the 200m Butterfly. Rewind twelve years to the Sydney Olympics in 2000 and we witnessed the debut of this Olympic great in this same event. It was the only event Phelps swam in and, though he did not win a medal, the 15-year-old was the youngest person to make the U.S. Swim team in over 60 years.

Since 2000, he has dominated the 200m butterfly in events all over the world. This year in London, the last time he would ever swim this event, would be no different. Actually, I take that back, it was different: he would only take home the silver medal. With the 2012 London Olympics in the books Phelps grabs his 18th gold medal and retires with more than twice the number of gold’s than any other Olympic athlete and 22 medals total.

Your TicketCity play of the week comes from a man who has to be related to Poseidon because I have never seen a person move so quickly in the water.  The play of the week is from the 2009 World Championships where Phelps set the world record (that still stands today) at 1:51:51 in the race that started it all; the 200m butterfly. There is some commentary in the beginning and the race starts at 2:30 in the video.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: , ,

Round and Round He Goes

April 9, 2012 By 2 Comments

Hey All,

My name is Brandon and starting today, I will be presenting TicketCity’s newest blog topic, the TicketCity Play of the Week. If you are anything like me, you’re getting tired of the same old top ten plays that look the same each day. In order to stir up the top play mixing pot, I’ve decided to bring a play a week that is not your everyday dunk or home run. That being said, I know there will be some extraordinary plays throughout the various seasons that will be too good to pass up, like Melo’s buzzer-beating three to win the game or Griffin’s two dunks on Gasol — so you’ll get some of those too. Hope you enjoy and with out further adieu, TicketCity’s Play of the Week.

This weeks play is somewhat behind schedule but is one of those plays that changes the sport forever so I can’t pass it up. Those of you that are somewhat familiar with skating probably know about the Tony Hawk 900. If not, here is a brief history. In 1999 Tony Hawk became the first person ever to complete 2.5 rotations in mid-air on a skateboard, the 900. Since then many have successfully repeated the maneuver but none have been able to exceeded it… until now. Twelve-year-old Tom Schaar became the first person to rotate 3 full times on a skateboard completing the 1080. Tom achieved this monumental stand with the help of the Woodward MegaRamp which launched him 15+ feet into the air. Now granted Mr. Hawk did conquer his 900 on a 6-10 foot vert ramp, but this is still a monstrous achievement and I give the kid props. Who do you think had the bigger accomplishment? Check it out and tell me what you think.

Tune in next week for another TicketCity Play of the Week.

Filed Under: Uncategorized
«Older Posts