What/where are the most saturated sports markets?

Factual Questions
1

And for purposes of this thread, I’m referring to professional sports teams only. But the question is definitely open to international responses as I know very little about sports outside of the U.S.

At any rate, a comment in another sports thread got me thinking about the number of professional sports teams in the Greater Los Angeles area. Off the top of my head, I can think of:

  • Lakers, Clippers and Sparks (basketball)
  • Dodgers, Angels, Quakes and 66ers (MLB and minor league baseball)
  • Kings and Ducks (hockey)
  • Avengers (arena football)
  • Galaxy (soccer – and isn’t Chivas USA based out here, too?)

So by my count, we have either 11 or 12 professional sports teams in the LA/Orange/San Bernardino County area (Greater LA usually also emcompasses Riverside and Ventura counties, but I’m not aware of any teams in either location). This seems like a lot, but is it the most? How do other markets compare?

ETA: It occurs to me that some mod may consider this better fodder for Cafe Society. Should this thread be relocated, I just wanted to be able to say I called it. :smiley:

2

L.A. is actually under-served with professional sports teams. Notice that the NFL is missing from your list. Both the Raiders and the Rams left for better prospects elsewhere and nobody has forked over the movie to get them replaced. This is truly odd since the L.A. metro region is by far the second largest in the country.

There is a site for everything on the Net and you can find all sports franchises state by state atDirectory of Team Sports. I’d define only the ones listed as Professional and not the ones listed as League to be major teams rather than minor league. You can add both in if you want of course.

If you stick to professional you get:

Anaheim Angels (MLB) - Anaheim
Anaheim Mighty Ducks (NHL) - Anaheim
LA Avengers (AFL) - Los Angeles
LA Clippers (NBA) - Los Angeles
LA Dodgers (MLB) - Los Angeles
LA Galaxy (MLS) - Los Angeles
LA Lakers (NBA) - Los Angeles
LA Kings (NHL) - Los Angeles
LA Sparks (WNBA) - Los Angeles

For New York City, you also have to include in suburban teams:

MetroStars (MLS) - East Rutherford
New York Dragons (AFL) - Long Island
New York Giants (NFL) - New York City
New York Islanders (NHL) - New York City
New York Jets (NFL) - New York City
New York Knicks (NBA) - New York City
New York Liberty (WNBA) - New York City
New York Mets (MLB) - New York City
New York Rangers (NHL) - New York City
New York Yankees (MLB) - New York City
New Jersey Devils (NHL) - East Rutherford
New Jersey Gladiators (AFL) - East Rutherford
New Jersey Nets (NBA) - East Rutherford

That’s 13 pro franchises in and around NYC, more than the entire state of Texas has.

Have some fun playing with the site. Lots of interesting stuff there.

3

That site appears to be out of date.
The New Jersey Gladiators are not in New Jersey anymore, so take 1 away from New York.

The Houston AFL team is no more, so take 1 away from Texas, but add two for the missing Austin and Dallas AFL teams. It’s also missing the Houston MLS team and the San Antonio WNBA team.

So that’s 12 for NYC and 14 for Texas.

4

Denver has an NFL team (Broncos), MLB (Rockies), NBA (Nuggets), NHL (Avalanche), Arena Football (Crush), MLS (Rapids), plus a professional Lacrosse team that draws well. Skipping lacrosse, that is 6 professional sports teams in a metro area of just over 2 million people. Hell the whole state has less than 5 million people.

5

The thing about LA and New York is that, while they have a large number of teams, they also each have a large population. So I submit that you cannot consider them ‘oversaturated’.

Bizjournals.com did a study examining 179 markets across the US of A for their abilities to support professional sports teams.

Their methodology wasn’t to consider population, however; they considered total personal income of the metro area, on the (fairly justifiable) assertion that supporting a team will have to involve paying for it, for things like tickets, etc.

LA actually came in first, because they don’t have an NFL team. And the study notes that the San Bernardino/Ontario area, part of the LA metro, could by itself support another major league baseball team.

According to the study the most overburdened sports markets, from the bottom up, are Tampa-St Pete, Phoenix, Denver, Pittsburgh, and Kansas City.

6

And Kansas City came this close to adding another major league team before the deal that kept the NHL’s Penguins in Pittsburgh.

What do those first three cities have in common? They all got expansion baseball teams in the 1990s that are struggling to keep afloat.

7

Colorado isn’t anywhere close to going out of business, and neither is Arizona. The Florida teams and KC have big problems.

8

I would think that Green Bay, WI would be the most oversaturated city when you consider the value of the franchise compared to the population and income.

9

To start with English football (which will dominate any answer), taking the teams in the top four division, which pretty much defines those which are fully professional:
London has 12/13, the first five in the Premiership this season:

Arsenal, Spurs, Chelski, Fulham, West Spam
Charlton, QPR, Millwall, Crystal Palace, Leyton Orient, Brentford, Dagenham & Redbridge, Watford (at a geographical stretch)

Compared to population, Manchester beats this, though. A third of the size (2.5m), Greater Manchester has four Premiership teams and four lower-league ones:

Man City, Man Utd, Bolton, Wigan
Bury, Stockport, Oldham, Rochdale
Adding in rugby and cricket does boost London (plenty of rugby union, and several of the county cricket grounds are in the capital), but these are surely insignificant in comparison.

To look at it another way, add Liverpool, Everton and Blackburn to the teams for Manchester, and a third of the entire Premiership is located in the north-east, within fifty miles of one another.

10

:confused: :eek: :o :smack:

North west.

There’s also rugby league to consider, when talking about the north west: Wigan, Salford, Warrington, Widnes, Leigh, St. Helen’s etc. etc. all within 50 miles of each other, once again.

11

I’ll have to do a little more searching when I’m not at work to find out about other sports, but until the reorganization a couple of years ago, six of Japan’s twelve pro baseball teams played within one hour of the center of Tokyo.

12

How would a lower level English soccer team such as Leyton Orient compare to the US franchises the OP is talking about, though? It appears that many (most? all?) minor league franchises, not listed by the OP, are professional.

13

Well, they’d probably beat the Galaxy, put it that way. :slight_smile:

14

In the central league:
Yomiuri Giants
Yakult Swallows
Yokohama Baystars

Pacific league:
Seibu Lions
Lotte Marines

The latest reorganization didn’t change much: the Hawks stayed in Fukuoka, Osaka lost the Buffaloes, but Sendai got the Eagles. None of these changes involved Tokyo-area teams. You have to go back to 2003, when the Fighters moved from Tokyo to Hokkaido.

15

According to this Leyton Orient FC had a turnover of 2 million quid in 2004/2005. They are in League One, which is apparently the third tier (with The Championship and then the Premier League above them).
According to the guardian last year the average salary for League One players was £67,850, up 24%. So I think it’s safe to say that they’re professional, but I have no idea how they would compare to a third-tier US franchise

16

Chivas USA is based in Los Angeles and shares the Home Depot Center with the LA Galaxy. In other words, they both play in the same stadium.

Well, the Galaxy suck this year, so anything is possible, but probably not, actually.

17

The Royals problems are almost all the making of the cheap owner who pockets all the money and refuses to pay for good players.

18

Tokyo metropolis has 12.6 million people, according to wikipedia, and I don’t think that includes nearby Yokohama (3.6 million) or Kawasaki (1.3 million).

But baseball is extremely popular in Japan – much more than here in the US. Here in the US we have three to five major sports leagues (depending on your definition of major): NFL (football), MLB (baseball), NBA (basketball), NHL(hockey), MLS (soccer). Division I college basketball and football are de facto pro sports. There is also a large followings for golf and NASCAR, although the migratory nature of those sports makes them less relevant to this discussion.

Correct me if I’m wrong, but the only other major professional sports in Japan are sumo and soccer, with the J-League emerging as a relatively new entrant. Baseball still dominates the sports world in japan in a way that Americans probably can’t relate to.

19

Sumo, in terms of popularity is far, far behind baseball and football (soccer). Depending on who is counting and how, soccer may actually be more popular than baseball. Fighting sports such as kickboxing, mixed martial arts and boxing are hugely popular but they’re obviously not team sports.

As far as J-League is concerned, 9 out of 18 J1 teams are in the greater Tokyo area:

Kashiwa Reysol
Yokohama F.C.
F.C. Tokyo
Omiya Ardija
JEF United Chiba
Yokohama F. Marinos
Kawasaki Frontale
Uruwa Reds
Kashima Antlers (A bit of a stretch, though)

There are a further 4 teams out of 13 at the J2 level:

Tokyo Verdy
Mito HollyHock (Even more of a stretch, but still in Kanto)
Shonan Bellmare
Thespa Kusatsu

If you add the five pro baseball teams, that’s a lot of sport.

20

So if Tokyo has 12.6 million population and Green Bay, WI has (according to their website) 103,000 then Tokyo would have to have approximately 122 pro sport franchises to be as saturated as Green Bay. That doesn’t even begin to take into account the value of the franchises. The Packers are worth hundreds of millions of dollars.

I’ll stick with my original contention that Green Bay, WI is the most saturated sports market.