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Here’s a list from Forbes of North America’s Top 20 Sports Cities in 2020 –
1.) Boston
2.) Philadelphia
3.) San Francisco Bay Area
4.) Chicago
5.) Minneapolis
6.) Dallas
7.) Detroit
8.) Denver
9.) Miami
10.) Los Angeles
11.) New York/New Jersey
12.) Washington D.C.
13.) Phoenix
14.) Pittsburgh
15.) Cleveland
16.) Houston
17.) Toronto
18.) Atlanta
19.) Charlotte/Triangle
20.) Tampa BayOuch. Seems like not long ago St. Louis was toward the top of the list. We need to get at least an NFL team someday to get back on track. We’re a city that has had at least one “World Championship” in all 4 major sports – MLB, NFL, NBA, and NHL.
I don’t know what criteria Forbes is using. Using my own thoughts, Detroit is #1. Its the only major city that I can think of that has never lost one of its 4 major sports teams …. Pistons-Tigers-Redwings-Lions.
Right now these teams are all in ebb mode but they all had their runs as top-notch power houses. Unfortunately, all four have spent so many years as losers and in general given Motown fans little satisfactions…. but they all have hometown loyal partisan fans which has allowed the teams to stay put.bccran, if you would please share the link to the referenced article, it would sure help the rest of us to comment. Thank you…
bccran, it would far more preferable to the community if you would just share the link instead of expecting everyone to have to go and Google it themselves. If you care enough about a topic to start a new thread, surely you could just copy the link that is right in front of your eyes. It is common courtesy.
I went ahead and checking out the article. It is a bit dated, coming out in July. The criteria was these three things, attendance, television viewership, and social media buzz.
With that obviously the ranking will skew to bigger metro areas, and to cities with the four major pro sports organizations. St. Louis without an NFL or NBA team,, not to mention smaller market, will be well down the list. Still you would think they could top Charlotte. The area does have 3 major league franchises, football, basketball, hockey, but rarely competes in any of those sports. Plus they are all relatively new teams, but they must have a strong following.
Miami at number nine surprises me, ahead of LA even though you would think with six area franchises LA would be in the top five. And New York at 11 is surprising.
If my thinking is correct, Pittsburgh at 14 is the highest ranking of a city without all four major sports represented (no NBA). The Steelers and the Penguins do have strong followings.
Kind of a strange list. The fact that there is no equalizer, no “per capita” factor, makes it more of a novelty than anything truly insightful.
14’s point of a city never losing a major sports franchise is interesting. Pittsburgh has not lost a major franchise, although they did lose the Pipers after the initial season of the ABA. But that hardly qualifies as new leagues are often unstable. But I think that original Pittsburgh Piper team won the ABA championship.
Brian, your common courtesy is my inability. So I do the best I can. I’m not super computer literate like you are. When I quote a list from Forbes that was published in 2020, I’m sorry, but I think that will have to suffice.
Since you ask others to Google, why can you not Google how to do a simple copy and paste? To suggest it requires significant computer aptitude is not the case at all. It is very basic.
Here is how.
1. Double-click on the text you want to copy, or highlight it.
2. With the text highlighted, press Ctrl + C to copy.
3. Move your cursor to the appropriate location and press Ctrl + V to paste.4. (optional) If you also want to have the link be highlighted here, click on the underlined “LINK” word just above where you type your posts. And paste the link in the popup box next to “URL”.
Even if you skip #4, just having the text of the link here makes it easy for us to do our own copy and paste and get to the referenced page much quicker.
It is very simple. Please give it a try!
I would have linked it when I looked it up, but am using my tablet and am not sure how to do it using this. But I will look it up right now and see if there is a way.
Thank you very much for the detailed instructions, Brian. But it still seems complicated to this dinosaur. Best that I don’t reference outside materials I find interesting if they require a link to be courteous. Will just use them for personal reference. Again, thank you for your kindness and teachings.
Don’t feel bad, Cranny…….I too am a bonafide 21st century dinosaur. This list is a joke. How does Phoenix rank higher than Cleveland? I have lived in both cities and it’s not even close. I think Boston and Philly at #1 and #2 seem right. I spent a week in Philly about 15 years ago and attended 4 Phillies games and it was the time of my life. I ran into this fun group seated near me the second night I was there. I must have drank 20 beers that night, along with a few swigs of whiskey from one of their flasks. I have no idea how I found my way back to my hotel that night. When I woke up the next morning, I found two ripped out pages from my program book wadded up in my front right pants pocket with phone numbers crudely scribbled on them. I ended up meeting these yahoos again that night at the ballpark. I only drank about 8 beers, but downed a ton of whiskey. I don’t know when I had so much fun at a ballgame than I had with these four characters. When it was time to fly back home I really didn’t want to leave. I really felt at home in Philadelphia. You know, most people retire to Florida or Arizona, but when the day comes for me to hang em up, I just may pull up stakes and head to the City of Brotherly Love.
Great story Pugsley!
My sister and her family have lived in the Philadelphia area for a long time. I get a flavor of Philly fanhood from my bother-in-law and my nephew.
Philly fans are tough and demanding on their teams, though. The booing of the great Mike Schmidt was a classic example.
Philly fans are tough. I think they threw batteries at JD Drew on his first visit back in a Cardinal uniform.
14’s point of a city never losing a major sports franchise is interesting. Pittsburgh has not lost a major franchise, although they did lose the Pipers after the initial season of the ABA. But that hardly qualifies as new leagues are often unstable. But I think that original Pittsburgh Piper team won the ABA championship.
Pittsburgh doesn’t have an NBA team.
I have been to one Phillies home game, and it was in April and cold in the old Vet so hard to tell as far as fans enthusiasm. But from what I have heard, you guys are right on in how they approach their sports teams. Tim McCarver talked about it on the Cardinal broadcast a couple of years ago or so as well. He characterized them as tough, but fair – to a point – no one is immune from being booed if they screw up.
14er – yes, Pittsburgh does not have an NBA team. They did have an ABA team in the ABA’s inaugural season, but the team moved after that one year to Minnesota. I think they moved again or folded somewhere along the line, and were not one of the four teams from the ABA that survive today as part of the NBA (Indiana Pacers, Denver Nuggets, San Antonio Spurs and Brooklyn Nets).
Was thinking of the dubious distinction of cities that have lost two franchises in the same sport. Our own St. Louis is one of those, having lost two NFL franchises. The Nation’s Capitol has lost two MLB franchises. Are there any other two-time losers of a major league sports franchise in one sport?
Pug’s back yard city has a wild history with MLB. They got the Braves from Boston, lead the league in attendance for awhile, but later lost the Braves, then got the Pilots from Seattle and have held on to them for 50 years now.
BM, New York has lost the Dodgers and Giants. LA has lost the Rams and Raiders, although the Rams have returned.
LA has had an interesting NFL history.
The Chargers went from LA to San Diego then back to LA.
The Rams went from Cleveland to LA to St. Louis then back to LA.
The Raiders went from Oakland to LA then back to Oakland then to Las Vegas.
bike…. off the top of my head… NHL Atlanta lost the Flames and the Thrashers. Let’s face it in that part of Georgia the NHL isn’t going to fare well.
Good call on Atlanta losing two NHL franchises. I thought about New York having the Giants and Dodgers leave at the same time, but they were pretty much autonomous franchises with the Dodgers more specific to Brooklyn.
St. Louis has lost a major league franchise in three of the four majors, with hockey the exception. Course in baseball they still had a team, so losing one was not that bad. Same thing happened to Philadelphia.
Speaking of which, had the Athletics had decent ownership in their Kansas City era they could have thrived there. They would have been better off staying in KC than going to Oakland, which has always been more of a Giants territory. But first they had Arnold Johnson, an owner who ran the franchise as a Yankee farm club. Then Charlie Finley, who soon after buying was looking for a different location, most likely Atlanta or Dallas, before ending up going to Oakland. Had Finley marketed the team and committed to the area, and not been such an obnoxious character, he would have had a more valuable commodity at the end of his reign than he did with Oakland.
I have always felt the Athletics franchise has been poorly treated. Going back to Connie Mack, who ran the team into the ground with his unwillingness to take on additional investors in the late ‘40s and early ‘50s, and instead kept control while putting his incompetent sons in to run the organization. The result of course was the family had to sell the team after Mack died, and sold to a New York investor (Johnson), who further damaged the organization.
They have had some good teams over the last 50 years or so, but are never a top tier team in terms of attendance. Finley, for all his shortcomings did have a strong management team who drafted well in the early years of the player draft, and built a powerhouse outfit in the ‘70s. But like in Philly, they had to sell off a lot of their star players to make ends meet, not to mention free agency started to have an impact. The latter day teams have been excellently run by Billy Beane and company. They run on a limited budget, but have had their share of success despite the small market financial hinderances.
In terms of popularity within their area, they seem a bit like a poor man’s Minnesota Twins to me. The Twins Are very popular within their geographic area, whereas the A’s have that beast called the San Francisco Giants always lingering over them, and will never be the top dog.
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