In order not not hijack this thread, I started another one.
Which American sports league is likely to have the most franchise shifts?
Here’s my thoughts.
The NFL. I see either Jacksonville or St. Louis moving to the Los Angeles area. A long shot would be the San Diego Chargers. I see Buffalo moving to Toronto.
MLB. The Florida Marlins and Tampa Bay Rays. The Rays may stay if that new stadium is built. The Marlins still don’t have a definite stadium plan. I could see them pehaps in Charlotte.
NBA. Lots of shifts. New Orleans, Charlotte, Memphis, LA Clippers, Golden State Warriors, NJ Nets, and Oklahoma City. They’ll be an NBA team in Las Vegas and Seattle will get a team again.
NHL. Lots of shifts. Florida, Tampa Bay, Nashville, Carolina, maybe Columbus and maybe one of the LA teams. I have no idea what cities will end up with teams.
The NBA and NHL have overexpanded and teams will continue to move around searching for the best deal for themselves.
I don’t think there are any likely franchise shifts in baseball. The Rays will be in Tropicana Field for another ten years. The Marlins might move, but you’d have to find a willing owner with a new stadium and I don’t see them lining up.
I think the answer is likely the NHL, which has a lot of franchises in really stupid places that aren’t drawing fans very well.
I agree that it’s probably the NHL. Could a team actually go back to Canada?
I am a little confused by your choices. Granted, I can’t predict what will happen in 25 years, but the Hornets are doing well in New Orleans and with all the bullshit Clay Bennett just pulled, I don’t see why he would leave Oklahoma City. The Clippers may not be good, but they seem to be making Donald Sterling money and have been in L.A. for a long time. Where are they going to be more lucrative? Same goes for the Warriors.
Charlotte also just got a team, and while the team stinks, I think they’ll hang on there. If they get good they will certainly get community support. The Nets are going to Brooklyn assuming the arena stuff works out, that’s a cinch.
Me too… where are the Warriors going? Just because the Oakland Coliseum sucks for the A’s and Raiders doesn’t mean Oakland is incapable of supporting a team. Plus the Arena was recently gutted and rebuilt, so it’s practically new. BART goes right there, too, making it extremely accessible for the East Bay & San Francisco, which means they sell out pretty regularly.
The time frame is the next 25 years. I’m putting Clippers and Warriors in Las Vegas/San Diego. I don’t see OKC keeping a team very long. Give the New Orleans Hornets a few bad years and I don’t see them staying unless New Orleans rebuilds.
Incidentally I do agree that the NHL has over-expanded, but the evidence is in the quality of the lower-level players, not in the hackneyed old saw about Phoenix or Tampa Bay.
The Clippers moved to L.A. from San Diego! Why is a team going back there?
They weren’t very good two years ago, and at the moment they appear poised for long-term success, since they have one of the best young players in the league.
I “can see” lots of NFL teams wanting to move to Los Angeles. What I can’t see is why the move would make sense NOW, when L.A. has managed just fine without a pro football team for ages.
Nobody is going to move to L.A. unless the city uses tax dollars to build a huge new stadium with loads of luxury boxes and corporate suites. Los Angeles taxpayers have shown absolutely no inclination to do such a thing.
The Jaguars or Bills might LIKE to go to Los Angeles, but at their first meeting with the mayor, they’d be told “We’ll be happy to have you- hope you like the Colosseum.” And that’s where the talks will come to an end.
Thing is, the NFL desperately wants a team in L.A., but no team regards L.A. as an ideal place to play. Smaller cities are far more likely to give owners a sweetheart deal, because they’re desperate to be seen as “big time” cities. L.A. doesn’t need to prove it’s a big time city- everybody knows it IS one.
Sterling clearly does not give a crap about being second banana to the Lakers or he wouldn’t have moved to LA in the first place 25 years ago. And for that matter he would have made more of an effort to put a decent team on the floor. Maybe he would move if someone made him a good offer - although who would make that offer to him, and for the Clippers, I can’t imagine. But the team is apparently making him money just as it has done for years.
Jim Balsillie, billionaire co-owner of Research in Motion, has been trying to move a team to Canada for years. The NHL powers that be won’t let him, for a variety of internal political reasons that essentially amount to the fact that they’re determined to somehow get a big network TV deal, and moving a team to Hamilton or Kitchener-Waterloo is an admission that much of the U.S. market doesn’t really exist.
NHL Attendance By Percentage of Seats Sold/Available Seats, 2007-2008:
CANADIAN TEAMS:
Calgary 112.4%
Ottawa 107.1%
Toronto 103.4%
Vancouver 101.1%
Montreal 100% (largest arena in the NHL, incidentally)
Edmonton 98.4%
(In case you’re all wondering how a team can sell more than 100% of its seats, I think it has to do with luxury box ticket sales and standing room sales.)
SOUTHERN US TEAMS:
Anaheim 102.6%
San Jose 99.5%
Dallas 97.3%
Tampa Bay (Tampa) 94.6%
Carolina (Raleigh) 88.8%
Nashville 87.1%
Atlanta 85.3%
Phoenix 84.7%
Florida (Sunrise) 80.2%
There does seem to be a pretty strong correlation between proximity to the North Pole and interest in big league hockey. If you look just at southeastern U.S. teams, none have good attendance by NHL standards except Tampa Bay, who are right in the middle of the pack.
Actually, it has more to do with the fact that putting another team in Southern Ontario is stepping on the toes of both the Toronto Maple Leafs and Buffalo Sabres and (more importantly) the head of the NHL’s relocation committee is President of AEG, which just so happens to have an arena in Kansas City in need of a tenant.
So what these statistics show is that several NHL teams in “non-traditional markets”—where there is no history to draw upon, little youth hockey, and little media support—are averaging above 85% attendance. Not to mention that most of these teams are perennial losers. I call that a success. So does the NHL.
Many of those fans are also there to cheer for the other team. As far as I know, the Dallas Stars are the only Southern NHL team that actually has anything resembling a fan base.
Phoenix lost $30 million last year. How many of those tickets were bought from a box office (full value) as opposed to 2-for-1s, discounts or just given away at restaurants?
From what I’ve heard, from relatives vacationing there, is that nobody pays face-value for seats.
“Come to dinner at Hooters and receive a coupon for two free tickets to a Coyotes game.”
There have been articles over the years in places like “Forbes” the LA Clippers are very profitable. As they say in real estate “location, location, location”.
I could see the Buffalo Bills moving but historically the NFL has shied away from putting a team in Canada, I don’t think they want to hurt the CFL too much. Why, I don’t know. Perhaps lawsuit threats. Perhaps they want a weak competitor so they can tell politicians who complain about them being a monopoly in holding draftees to take-it-or-leave-it “they can always go to Canada”.
I would guess the NHL. I have my doubts about all the teams in southern US markets. The owners were interested in getting expansion fees from anyone. This may be farfetched but could you have NHL teams established in Europe/Russia over the next 25 years?
Which sport has the most moves over the last 25 years? I’ll guess NHL followed by NFL which can probably find a lot of cities to put 60,000 people in a stadium 8 times a year.
Chivas and the Revolution seem the most likely. I could see San Jose too, but they were moved once already so doing so again would mean that they’re totally giving up on that market. If not for them having a stadium under construction I would think Kansas City would be the most likely.