Enter the phrase “Boston fans are . . . ” in Google, and the top three autocomplete suggestions you’ll get are “the worst,” “spoiled” and “trash.” The results below them are peppered with words like “annoying,” “obnoxious” and “racist.” Not exactly the folksy charm Hyundai portrayed in its 2020 Super Bowl homage to the city, but for the Beantown faithful, charm isn’t part of the playbook.
“We’re too distracted by the shiny rings we have to care,” says Mahlon Williams, founder of I Love Boston Sports, the company behind one of the region’s bestselling sports shirts, “New England Vs Everyone.” “We wear the hate as a badge of honor.”
But now there is a reason for Google to update that autocomplete suggestion, to “Boston fans are . . . the best”: The capital city of Red Sox Nation tops Forbes’ inaugural ranking of the best sports cities in North America, outpacing other sports-crazed cities like New York, Philadelphia and Chicago. Our ranking of 20 cities takes into account how many fans are packing their teams’ stands, watching them on TV and following them on social media. We consider only the four major American sports: baseball, football, basketball and hockey. Women’s professional sports, men’s soccer and college sports are not factored into our formula because the data is unavailable.
Professional sports are back—or at least, trying to be—with MLB, the NBA and the NHL all attempting to resume play after shutting down in March, and the NFL still planning to begin its season on time.
The return, if it holds, will be nothing short of rapturous for fans who for four months have had to make do with the anemic comfort of live-streamed singalongs of “Take Me Out to the Ball Game” and virtual tailgate parties organized around Super Bowl reruns. News about actual wins and losses might even offer some respite from recent controversies surrounding social justice and fairness, or the latest report from the Washington Post about allegations of rampant sexual harassment within Washington’s NFL organization.
“We need something that we all can cheer for. We need something new we can watch together.”
The only live sports broadcasts of the pandemic—mostly pallid (or revolting) replacements like marble races and spitting contests—could hardly purge the aggressions of Boston’s Red Sox Nation, absorb the vicious temperament of New York City’s dueling tabloid sports pages or quench the drunken ambition displayed in Chicago’s Wrigleyville after the Cubs broke a 108-year drought and won the World Series in 2016. No. 2 on the Forbes list, Philadelphia, still hasn’t lived down Eagles fans’ furious snowball attack on Santa Claus, and the accompanying thunderous boos, a half-century ago. But Philadelphians at least get to bask in that runner-up status without their teams being tainted by cheating scandals.
“What people don’t get is that we didn’t boo Santa,” Birds fan Steve Kelley recounted to Philadelphia Inquirer reporter Ronnie Polaneczky in 2008. “We booed a bad Santa. There’s a difference. If it had been a bad Baby Jesus,” one who, say, fell out of his manger, “we would’ve booed him, too.”
The worst place for sports? Not surprisingly, it’s an area with a reputation for its own brand of hospitality to visiting fans from the Northeast. Tampa Bay has no NBA team. The Rays play baseball in a domed 1980s relic. The NFL’s Buccaneers are so dismal, they have a section on the team’s Wikipedia page dedicated to their losing streaks. Both teams sit at the bottom of their leagues in attendance. Hockey’s Lightning draw a consistent crowd, but the NHL franchise is still ignored by 75% of the local population.
“I hate the saying ‘I live where you vacation,’ but it’s true,” says Chris Fasick, 41, who runs the largest Tampa meme account. He’s a regular at Bucs and Lightning games who scoffs at critics from places like Boston and Philly. “It’s just jealousy coming from sad Northeasterners because they have to save up all year to come spend a week here.”
The solution: Steal from Boston. The Buccaneers committed $50 million to poach Tom Brady from the Patriots in March and followed it up by luring tight end Rob Gronkowski, Brady’s former teammate and fellow Super Bowl winner, out of retirement to join him. In a gesture of brand bravado, the star quarterback is looking to trademark the names “Tompa Bay” and “Tampa Brady.”
Best Sports Cities Ranking
Billie Weiss / Boston Red Sox / Getty Images
Len Redkoles / NHLI / Getty-Images
Carlos Avila Gonzalez / The San Francisco Chronicle / GettyImages; Focus on Sport / GettyImages
Jamie Squire / Getty Images
Mark Brown / Getty Images
Tom Pennington / Getty Images
Dave Reginek / NHLI / Getty Images; Abbie Parr- / GettyImages
Justin Edmonds / Getty-Images
Jonathan Bachman / GettyImages
Brian Rothmuller / Icon Sportswire / GettyImages
Jim McIsaac / Getty Images (2)
Michael Reaves / GettyImages
Alika Jenner / Getty Images
Scott Taetsch / Getty Images
Jonathan Daniel / Getty mages
Scott Winters /Icon Sportswire / GettyImages; Jim McIsaac / GettyImages
Mark Blinch / NHLI / GettyImages
Michael Reaves / GettyImages
Scott Grau / Icon Sportswire / Getty-Images
Will Vragovic / Getty-Images
Methodology
Forbes’ ranking of the best sports cities is based on our fan rankings for each of the four North American professional sports leagues—the NFL, the NHL, the NBA and MLB. Only cities with a team in at least three of those leagues were considered, the assumption being that a city that can field at least one team in every league already has a stronger fan base than a city that can field only one, or has lost a team in a relocation. (Pitting Green Bay, with only one professional sports team, against New York, which has nine teams, does not make for a meaningful comparison.) Each league ranking was compiled based on three years of the following fan consumption metrics: local television ratings (per Nielsen), stadium attendance based on capacity reached, secondary ticket demand (per StubHub), merchandise sales (per Fanatics), social media reach (Facebook and Twitter followers based on the team’s metro area population) and hometown crowd reach (defined by Nielsen as a percentage of the metropolitan area population that listened to, watched and/or attended a game in the last year). Television information was unavailable for every Canadian team, but no teams were penalized in the ranking for that missing metric. The listing of each city’s oldest team and its debut date is for the oldest team currently playing in that city, regardless of whether that franchise originated in another city. Championships include those won in football before a league merger formed the current NFL.
Correction: The Red Wings were initially incorrectly listed as the oldest team in Detroit.
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