Albuquerque seems to be a fairly affluent city, with about 1 million people in and around it. It also has a fairly young demographic-could it support a major league baseball team? How about an NFL franchise?
How is the local minor league baseball?
I always liked the city-for you NM dopers-what would you call your team?
Albuquerque would be much smaller than any other city with a major league baseball team. Its metropolitan population is only about 840,000, which makes it just half the size of the smallest current MLB city, Milwaukee. Dozens of cities without teams are bigger.
Even if it’s affluent, it seems unlikely such a small city could send enough people to the stadium to support an MLB team.
The NFL is a completely different thing; attendance isn’t as important. So maybe that.
They have a great minor-league ballpark and team which I visited last summer.
But the town is pretty damn small.
They still rope off downtown on weekend nights so everyone can walk around.
I don’t see it and/or the surrounding area supporting anything much bigger than the Isos.
I have only been to Albuquerque twice, but I think they stand a better chance of supporting a team than Las Vegas - and the mayor here in Las Vegas is bound and determined to get a professional sports team located here if it kills him. He doesn’t care what sport - hell, he would be happy with a professional Lacrosse team.
I think the difference is that Albuquerque would probably embrace a team and there could be some eventual “home town support” whereas Las Vegas is made up of about 90% transplants from other cities who don’t give a damn about a team here - they are quite happy to support their teams from “back home”. So I think a professional team in Albuquerque would be a lot better idea!
Everyone in New Mexico is pretty much a Colorado or Texas fan, with the occasional random Steelers fan (we have an oddly high number of those, given the distance to Pittsburgh). So far as I can tell, we’d definitely have some hometown enthusiasm for our own major league anything team.
I just doubt the money is there, in all honesty. I think the Isotopes generally sell out, though. The Scorpions (hockey) might also, but I am less sure of that.
It’s really a large town, rather than a “city”. I could be totally wrong, though.
Hey, they’re bigger than Green Bay…
Green Bay, in fairness, does rely on Milwaukee to some extent, and for a long while held some of its games there.
However, it’s possible an NFL team could make a go of it in Albuquerque. An NFL team could possibly succeed in Anchorage, or Quebec City, or Honolulu; the attendance needs of an NFL team just aren’t that great. The NFL is first and foremost a television program, and only secondarily a live sporting event.
An NFL team has to draw a lot of fans to each game, but only has eight home games to draw them to, almost all of them on Sundays. It’s much easier to get someone to buy season’s tickets to an eight-game commitment than a 41-game commitment (hockey and basketball) or an 81-game commitment (baseball) even if the price per game is higher. **A fan who goes to many games isn’t just spending money, he or she is spending time. ** Because of its short schedule, the NFL demands very little of a person’s time to see an entire season. It’s easy to see eight games, even if you live a substantial distance from the stadium. By comparison, a baseball season ticket, even if comparatively priced in money, is vastly more expensive in terms of how much time you must commit; 81 games in six months, most of them on weeknights. Most working people, people with families, simply can’t find the time to attend 81 ballgames when more than half of them are night games on work nights. I couldn’t attend half the Blue Jays’ games if I lived next door to the park, and living an hour away, forget it.
So an NFL team, in a supportive market, could succeed even in a small town, because it’s possible to get a big draw when you only play Sundays and so few of them at that. They make most of their money from television, not tickets sold. A major league baseball team needs to draw vastly more people to the park; the best-attended team in the NFL in 2007, the Washington Redskins, drew half the fans of the worst-attended MLB team, the Florida Marlins, and the Redskins were way above the NFL average and Marlins way below the MLB average. Baseball puts far greater pressure on the population’s ability to physically attend games.
I think, with the right business plan, an NFL team could work in many small cities.
that is not to say NFL teams in small cities might not have disadvantages. The Buffalo Bills aren’t testing the waters in Toronto because they like eat Smarties and Coffee Crisps; they’re getting ready to run for the border because the Toronto market’s so much bigger.
Tiny hijack: While Rick’s basic point is correct, NFL season tickets typically are a 10 game annual commitment because the teams unabashedly soak their loyal season ticket holders for two exhibition games each year at full price.
Tell that to Buffalo.
Even if I wasn’t a Simpsons fan, I would still love their name- the Albuquerque Isotopes.
Here’s a very important consideration that hasn’t been addressed yet. I THINK I know the answer, but I have to ask: does Albuquerque have any kind of corporate base?
I doubt it, but I might be surprised.
THAT’S very important to team owners. When owners threaten to move a team to a new city, one of the most important issues is luxury boxes and corporate suites. Older stadiums generally have very few (if any) of those. They represent enormous profits to team owners. Hence, any team that’s looking to relocate is going to want a brand new stadium with lots of luxury boxes- and that stadium has to be located where there are lots of big, rich companies to lease those boxes.
Does Albuquerque have any big companies like that? If not, don’t hold your breath waiting for a big league or NFL franchise.
That’s the real point. Absolutely.
Metro Las Vegas not only has more than three times the population of Albuquerque, it’s awash in money, even if the industrial base is small. That’s why every team sport has been eying the city for a franchise.
Albuquerque is the 59th largest metro region. For comparison, Buffalo is 46th.
My earlier comment, for those who didn’t get the reference, was related to the announcement that the Buffalo Bills NFL team will start playing one of its home games in Toronto for the next five years. (And preseason games in three of the next five years.) The eight-game package will earn them more than twice their income for a whole regular season.
No city that can’t match those numbers will get a NFL franchise. It is all about home games, and not merely television. Small cities can’t compete for luxury box income.