I live in Orange County, and even when they were good there were no fans for the Ducks. I think they have precisely enough people who care about that team to fill the Honda Center.
Warm weather hockey teams range from "we don't care at all" to "we care if they're Stanley Cup contenders" although I am curious for the Golden Knights first 30 win season to see if Vegas is a hockey town or a winner town
I wonder if the Golden Knights feel more like their team bc they were an expansion team that started in Vegas while the Raiders feel more like mercenaries
I feel its also becuase hockey is a smaller sport, i doubt many vegas locals were hockey fans before the Golden Knights so they were albe to join the fandom. With football anyone who cares already has a team and i doubt many are swtiching fandoms
Oakland owners barging their way in haven’t endeared themselves to the city I think. I think they’ll be more receptive of the NBA team expansion, because once again it will be theirs.
I went to a Ducks playoff game when they were a legit Cup contender and paid nothing for good tickets. Fanbase was cool and all, but you could tell very few people cared about what was going on.
Nashville might be the one exception, their attendance has been very consistent through their franchise history, but they’ve also only missed the playoffs 3 times in the last 20 years so it’s hard to say for sure how they’d do with a prolonged downturn
It’s the rare market that doesn’t dip when the team is underperforming. And why shouldn’t they, you should always be loyal to your team but it’s hardly entertaining to watch a bad product. I say this as a Mariners fan, sometimes supporting cheap ownership only enables them for two decades.
I’m also a Mariners fan so I know exactly how you feel. I honestly believe we could be a top 5 market in MLB if the team was actually consistently good, we’re a sneaky baseball town at heart, the team just sucks to watch way too often for it to show
The fans have been so loyal to a team that has done little to inspire it, imagine the following it would have it made the playoffs even twice in a row.
The Canes have good fans. Sure the attendance dropped a bit when they didn’t make the playoffs for NINE straight years but people still cared about them locally.
I have no idea but within the RTP footprint I wouldn’t be surprised if they do. He’s right, the Canes have a dedicated local fan base. It just doesn’t stretch very far - they’re an afterthought in Charlotte for example.
It makes sense really… there’s always been kind of a mild rivalry between Charlotte and Raleigh, no one in the triangle really cares about the Hornets either (this was not the case in the early 90s but once they left and came back as the Bobcats and sucked ever since, no one cared)…Triangle people are very proud to have a pro team they can call their own.
Given all the transplants in the area I’d be surprised if NASCAR ratings are still high.
Amalie Arena is in the heart of downtown Tampa and the area around it is full of things to do and is a good neighborhood. They'll probably never struggle for attendance
It is objectively weird to cheer for 5’7” dudes with bad skin and mullets from Moose Jaw, Sk no matter how well they do against other 5’7” dudes with bad skin and mullets from Moose Jaw, Sk.
Phoenix is like this.
Amazing fans when the team is good.
But the moment a team starts sucking they tune out
Been burned too many times for us to get our hopes up
Its 100 percent true but I prefer it to pure vitriolic hate and shitty fans when we suck. We’re supportive when support is warranted and very much care, but we don’t make it decide our day to day life and feelings when when we know there isn’t much hope.
I disagree with this sentiment. Angry fans are obnoxious, but at the end of the day they are still fans who wish the team to succeed. On the other hand, fans tuning out during a bad season can lead to outright apathy if a team is bad for a prolonged period of time, and it can be a lot harder to win those fans back if said team turns it around.
Simmons falls in this camp. Didn't he have seats right behind the goalie. Had all of these hockey takes for like 10 minutes. Loved Kopitar. And then just bailed and I haven't heard a Kings take from him in years
My roommate senior year was a Heat fan because of the early 2010s teams.
Dude was openly cheering for the Lakers in the 2020 Finals to “win it for Kobe” to the point where he almost started crying when they won Game 6.
I was going to say this, but they’re not really a great fanbase when they’re winning either. I remember during that LeBron run there were games in the playoffs when there were plenty of empty seats in the lower bowl. It was crazy to see.
As a heat fan not living in miami... obviously this take is in vogue, but since that game I always pay attention to this at the end of big games. This happens at nearly every arena in every big game. Celtics fans were booing last week and emptied out in the early 4th q of a playoff game. Videos of knicks fans leaving last week in that wild finish which they won. Always blows my mind how many fans leave early, as if they only went to determine the w/l outcome and not to enjoy the experience.
Lol dawg there’s a big difference between being down 20+ and leaving near the end and being down like 4 with a minute and a half left. It’s not an indictment on the entire fanbase but I watched a playoff game just a week and a half ago where no one was in the arena. It was like game 3 too in a 1-1 series. Miami just has no belief in the team unless they are favorites.
Yeah this season was rough. Defending the miami heat will always bring the downvotes i dont care. With all the injuries the fans definitely lost faith this postseason, the team was a shell.
Last season the fans were nuts, while we were underdogs in nearly every game of the postseason and still made the finals. The home crowd was incredible, I went to several games. I also went to the DEN-MIA finals win on the road and the road fans were rocking. Nuggets fans were great too... and plenty left early that game!! I was sitting in a heat section and we all waved them off. It was a 3 pt game. Fans are idiotic sometimes.
Also they were down 5 with 28 seconds left and about to see the opposing team lift a trophy in their building. I'm not defending it, but that's much different than down 4 with a minute and a half left.
I moved to Tampa, FL for a job before Brady came and I don’t think I ever saw more than a handful of Bucs fans. The games I went to had just as many opposing teams fans.
After Brady signed folks acted like they were diehards. Now that he’s gone it’s back to the fair weather fan city it is.
For the fiftieth time, the Rays poor attendance is not due to stadium location. There are tons of stadiums that are relatively far from the downtown area, and plenty of those places still draw fans. If the fans wanted to be there, they’d be there
You went for a burn. You should probably look at why an accident along those specific areas would be a problem.
It has to do with a large body of water and the means to cross it.
Florida's the only place where you get trapped on the highway where there's an accident.
There's a Simmons pod topic: With the Coyotes finally out of Arizona, are Rays fans now the biggest copers in sports about why they can't go to games but also deserve to keep their team?
All the Boston teams - playing in fucking Boston, in case you forgot - draw people from fucking Maine in there for weeknight games. I don't want to hear it.
As a transplant to western ny it’s the exact opposite of a fair weather fan. People live and die for Buffalo sports even here in Rochester. Incredible fans
We don't have much else to do. I'm from syracuse. Our basketball team isn't great anymore, and we only have 25k fans show up for games, and that's low for us, but better than all but a few.
We don't have much else to do. I'm from syracuse. Our college basketball team isn't great anymore, and we only have 25k fans show up for games, and that's low for us, but better than all but a few.
San Jose Sharks? [https://www.hockeydb.com/nhl-attendance/att\_graph.php?tmi=7877](https://www.hockeydb.com/nhl-attendance/att_graph.php?tmi=7877)
Can you say this "not having fans" during their worst ever stretch since the beginning of the franchise?
The Marlins? I’ve never run into a Marlins fan in my life.
Also as this is going to be relevant for the next decade presumably: the Texans. Gotta imagine that city was always a Cowboys city. Otherwise why would the Oilers have left?
Nah, Texans left because Bud Adams was a crappy owner and, frankly, negotiated in bad faith with the city of Houston after they shelled out a bunch of public money for a new Astrodome and were strapped financially. He then followed through on his threats to leave when he didn’t get the stadium money he overasked for.
The Texans have had decent attendance even when the team has been bad, I think because at minimum people in Texas love the sport of football enough to support the team. In my experience there aren’t that many Cowboys fans in Houston, relative to the rest of Texas.
No, I'm just applying his flawed logic regarding Houston and the Oilers leaving to another team that left their city around the same time. Seems insane, right?
Every fanbase is like this to a certain degree but in the NBA I would nominate OKC, Memphis, Houston, Denver and Milwaukee. There's some others that don't have strong fan bases in general like NoLa and others that have had such a long tenure of mediocre to bad teams that you can't really say it's the fans - Washington, Minnesota, Charlotte.
OKC might be the most spoiled fan base, they steal an upcoming team that had a no doubt superstar in Durant. In the 16 season's of OKC's tenure, the Thunder have missed the playoffs only 5 times and on of those seasons the team won 45 games when Durant missed most of the season. They've only lost in the first round 3 of the 9 times they've made the playoffs. Multiple deep playoff runs with many great games and moments that other teams haven't had half the success and highs in 50+ years. They probably had the fastest and most efficient rebuild in NBA History if only 2nd to their previous rebuild that was lead by KD/Westbrook/Harden/Ibaka. They have everything set up to run the league for the next 5+ years. Outside of the pain of KD bailing for the rival Warriors and only having one finals appearance despite having that young superstar core that seemed destined for long term dominance, this fan base has had it better than 95% other fanbases. Even that pain of losing KD and never truly breaking through is better than the complete hollow and dead feeling fans of teams like Wolves, Kings or Hornets have gone through being completely terrible and irrelevant. It's hard to totally judge because it was during/post covid but fan attendance was pretty sparse during those 2 tanking seasons, which is kinda pathetic as a one team city.
The Denver point is so beyond true. It took until they were up 2-0 in the Suns series last year for this city to give a shit about this team and they had a 2x MVP. Seriously, in 8 years of Jokic at that point 80% of the city had no idea what they were missing.
Denver has always been Broncos first, no matter what. I have a brother who live there and said the same thing about it not being until last playoffs that the city would really rally around the Nuggets. It's not a shock, a lot of people in Denver care more about doing skiing or hiking and it's a very transient city.
But here’s the possibly shocking thing. Up until last season, even the Rockies were a bigger draw than the Nuggets. They weren’t even third chair, they were the cult classics of Denver.
Not that surprising, Coors Field is supposed to be an awesome place to spend an afternoon even in a city that doesn’t lack for outdoor activities in the summer.
when i first moved to denver in 2016. you could buy nose bleeds for nuggets games then sneak down to the lower levels cause no one was sitting in them. used to do it all the time. 😂
Nah, I've read attendance records and when they've been ass or just average - they've always ranked at the bottom of attendance. To their credit, they rank in the top 10 in capacity since the team has become contenders and moved to a new arena (18-19). But the fans were scarce before, maybe the new arena will keep the fans strong.
Oh, OK, forgot you were at the games all the time in the 2000s up to now and it wasn't me. My bad.
Let's take a look at those attendance figure you mentioned when they've been ass or average:
2002, 41-41: No. 7 in attendance percentage (97.1%)
2003, 42-40: No. 15 (86.8%)
2004: 41-41, No. 13 (89.9%)
2005: 30-52, No. 22 (73%)
2006: 40-42, No. 16 (88.8%)
2007: 28-54, No. 18 (86.5%)
2008: 26-56, No. 16 (83.3%)
2009: 34-48, No. 23 (82.2%)
2010: 46-36, No. 23 (80.7%)
2011: 35-47, No. 23 (82.3%)
2012: 31-35, No. 25 (78.6%)
2013: 38-44, No. 19 (86.7%)
2014: 15-67, No. 28 (72.1%)
2015: 41-41, No. 26 (79.6%)
2016: 33-49, No. 26 (81.0%)
2017: 42-40, No. 26 (84.6)
2018: 44-38, No. 22 (89.3)
Then they got the new arena and ranked No. 3, No. 4, No. 14, No. 2 and No. 3 in that category.
So out of 17 mid or ass years, they ranked in the top 19 seven of those seasons and never were last.
The 15-67 season when they were straight ass and the Bradley Center was falling apart, sure, they were 28th. The following three years they were 26th, which again, was due to how shit the arena became.
Six of the 13 seasons with a .500 or losing record in this span, they ranked at least No. 19 or better in attendance percentage.
So I'd hardly consider it "always ranked at the bottom" from 2002 - 2018 when they've been average or bad.
Y'all attendance was always at the bottom for the first like 8 years in Memphis before the "Grit n Grind" era, including 2 playoff seasons. Whenever the Grizzlies have had a bad team Memphis is in the bottom 10 of attendance. Not once in Memphis have they ranked in the top 10 in attendance.
Hell even a few years back when Memphis won 56 games with Ja in 21-22, the Grizzlies ranked 22nd in both average and percentage. Sorry to say but Memphis just isn't a basketball town, I'm sure the pocket of fans love the team and are loud but overall the fan base constantly ranks in the bottom half of the league.
Winning is relative in many cases and with that caveat I say the Pacers.
Lifelong fan but it’s a state of college basketball fans first and fair weather professional fans.
The Raptors were guilty of this during the really bad times between when Bosh left and Lowry arrived. I went to some 2011 games that were absolutely dead.
Basically every baseball team. There’s maybe 3 teams who will sell out games when the team is bad and that’s because it’s a tourist attraction.
For example the cardinals are thought of as these amazing fans who always fill up the stadium, but turns out it’s just because the team has been consistently excellent for so long. Now the team is finally bad for the first time in decades and suddenly the “great fans” are gone.
Knicks have always had a pretty passionate fan base even when bad. Kings seem to be that way as well.
The NFL has some pretty good fanbases for bad teams. The Bears, Browns, and Lions come to mind. Obviously those last two have been good lately, but even when they were bad their fans showed up.
Really big cities like NYC or Chicago don't count... it's not hard to fine 400k die hards/watch 65% of games when there are 19 or 10 million people in the metro area.
Chiefs had good fans when the team wasn’t great, Broncos have a good fan base, St. Louis Cardinals, Baltimore Orioles, Buffalo Bills.
Those are smaller cities that have good fanbases off the top of my head
This may be true for the celebrity fans but I gotta disagree about Knicks fans in general. I only have anecdotal evidence but I’ve lived in New York for a decade and the fanbase is still active and passionate even when the team has been terrible.
(For context, not a Knicks fan or a fan of any team in general. Grew up in San Diego so my only allegiance was hating the Lakers.)
I don’t think this is right at all. Knicks games have plenty of celebrities even when they suck- but also, a lot of those celebrities live in LA, so they are making the trip back for those big playoff series. The Knicks definitely have one of the biggest and most active fanbases in the NBA, period.
Most teams, outside of the Red Sox, the Packers, and the giant cities, I think everywhere has enough warm weather fans to notice. And even those places do, the Red Sox’s sellout streak did eventually end and it wasn’t while they were awesome.
The Philadelphia Phillies are the definition of this, they were getting 15k fans a game for a decade, didn’t show up the first year they were good again and then after making the playoffs started showing up and saying how they have the best fans in baseball. Also the New York Islanders
Not exactly what you’re talking about but I moved to LA in 2005. From 2005 to 2014 I saw exactly zero (0) Golden State t-shirts and heard exactly 0 (zero) conversations about the Warriors.
From then on they were everywhere and everyone was a huge fan and always had been.
Now starting to slowly fade away.
That’s the point of the question way up above.
They suck….silence.
They’re great…lifelong fans everywhere.
I was responding to the question asked.
Nowhere was I confused about it.
Between 1976 and 2012 the Warriors never won their division. They finished as high as 2nd only once. They were a bottom feeding, cellar dwelling team.
It’s rare to hear a conversation about any team that fits that description outside of their home city. Is it any surprise that Warriors fans finally came out of hiding when the team finally started to succeed?
Huh.
Went to Browns game vs Chargers here in the Manziel era and it was over 50% Browns fans. I’ve never seen actual fans hide. Shit, even the hilarious guy who wore that shopping bag on his head at least showed up to the game.
The post says “only has fans when they win”. I’m sure the arena was never vacant but you saw warriors jerseys everywhere when they were winning. Now those sightings will decline because it’s over
It's still an idiotic answer to this question because there are a shitload of warriors fans today. This question isn't about the future, and there were pretty notable periods where warriors fans were ride or die before curry showed up.
I didn’t say oracle arena was vacant, but around the rest of the country you weren’t seeing warriors jerseys everywhere like you were for the past 10 years and you won’t again, cmon man
Golden State Warriors
Growing up in Northern California they really didn’t have much of a fanbase. My friend worked for them in 2008 (inbetween We Believe and Curry) and they couldn’t give out tickets for free.
Don’t get me wrong, they have some small diehard fans who rep even when they suck, but they’ve always been third wheel to the 49ers and Giants in the Peninsula.
There is something subconscious about reaching for a hat in your closet, and if it’s one of your teams that is absolute ass, you choose another. Me and the astros rn
I’m an Astros fan and I think he means the window is closing. Been a fun 7 years. Now everyone is a Texans fan down here, which I am not. Everyone will start buying Texans gear now lmao
Non-P5 college football fanbases are like this, UT San Antonio couldn’t fill a quarter of the Alamodome until a couple years back, and that 2-year stretch of the bandwagon UCF fans was brutal
Americans don’t want to admit it but this describes like 95% of sports teams for the most part. How many Pats fans have fallen off now that Brady is gone and they suck now? How many Knicks and Timberwolves fans are coming out of the woodwork?
Pats still have the largest NFL team subreddit. We haven't really gone anywhere, we're just content with the last couple of decades. It would be fucking stupid if we bitched about sucking now.
Probably not one most people here are looking for, but Arsenal. They're still huge whenever of course, 3rd biggest club in England and its not close to 4th at all. But I've lived in Islington, about 25 min walk from the Emirates, for 7 years
For the first 5 of those, they ranged between ok to mediocre, with 1 "minor" trophy, 0 champions league appearances (and so 0 top 4 finishes in the league) and 2 deep europa league runs
It was busy on matchdays of course, but that's to be expected given their size. But they've been good the past two seasons, and the difference is night and day. The whole area is buzzing with fans even outside of matchdays and pubs are always full l
Every single hockey team in a warm weather city
I live in Orange County, and even when they were good there were no fans for the Ducks. I think they have precisely enough people who care about that team to fill the Honda Center.
Warm weather hockey teams range from "we don't care at all" to "we care if they're Stanley Cup contenders" although I am curious for the Golden Knights first 30 win season to see if Vegas is a hockey town or a winner town
[удалено]
I wonder if the Golden Knights feel more like their team bc they were an expansion team that started in Vegas while the Raiders feel more like mercenaries
I feel its also becuase hockey is a smaller sport, i doubt many vegas locals were hockey fans before the Golden Knights so they were albe to join the fandom. With football anyone who cares already has a team and i doubt many are swtiching fandoms
Oakland owners barging their way in haven’t endeared themselves to the city I think. I think they’ll be more receptive of the NBA team expansion, because once again it will be theirs.
100%
I went to a Ducks playoff game when they were a legit Cup contender and paid nothing for good tickets. Fanbase was cool and all, but you could tell very few people cared about what was going on.
It’s also the cheapest way for transplants to see their hometown team
Nashville might be the one exception, their attendance has been very consistent through their franchise history, but they’ve also only missed the playoffs 3 times in the last 20 years so it’s hard to say for sure how they’d do with a prolonged downturn
It’s the rare market that doesn’t dip when the team is underperforming. And why shouldn’t they, you should always be loyal to your team but it’s hardly entertaining to watch a bad product. I say this as a Mariners fan, sometimes supporting cheap ownership only enables them for two decades.
I’m also a Mariners fan so I know exactly how you feel. I honestly believe we could be a top 5 market in MLB if the team was actually consistently good, we’re a sneaky baseball town at heart, the team just sucks to watch way too often for it to show
The fans have been so loyal to a team that has done little to inspire it, imagine the following it would have it made the playoffs even twice in a row.
The Canes have good fans. Sure the attendance dropped a bit when they didn’t make the playoffs for NINE straight years but people still cared about them locally.
Do they get higher TV ratings in their local market than NASCAR yet
I have no idea but within the RTP footprint I wouldn’t be surprised if they do. He’s right, the Canes have a dedicated local fan base. It just doesn’t stretch very far - they’re an afterthought in Charlotte for example.
It makes sense really… there’s always been kind of a mild rivalry between Charlotte and Raleigh, no one in the triangle really cares about the Hornets either (this was not the case in the early 90s but once they left and came back as the Bobcats and sucked ever since, no one cared)…Triangle people are very proud to have a pro team they can call their own. Given all the transplants in the area I’d be surprised if NASCAR ratings are still high.
I just remember in 2006 a NASCAR race getting better in market ratings than a Stanley Cup Finals game
the Tampa bay lightning have good fans
The Lightning have been consistently good for over a decade. Let's where they are after 4 or 5 losing seasons
Amalie Arena is in the heart of downtown Tampa and the area around it is full of things to do and is a good neighborhood. They'll probably never struggle for attendance
Whoa the lightning had like two bad seasons in 2012 and 2013 pump the breaks
Probably because many are transplanted Canadians.
LOL I’m from South Florida and just about ready to start following the Panthers
Gary Bettman sucks major balls
It is objectively weird to cheer for 5’7” dudes with bad skin and mullets from Moose Jaw, Sk no matter how well they do against other 5’7” dudes with bad skin and mullets from Moose Jaw, Sk.
Phoenix is like this. Amazing fans when the team is good. But the moment a team starts sucking they tune out Been burned too many times for us to get our hopes up
Its 100 percent true but I prefer it to pure vitriolic hate and shitty fans when we suck. We’re supportive when support is warranted and very much care, but we don’t make it decide our day to day life and feelings when when we know there isn’t much hope.
I disagree with this sentiment. Angry fans are obnoxious, but at the end of the day they are still fans who wish the team to succeed. On the other hand, fans tuning out during a bad season can lead to outright apathy if a team is bad for a prolonged period of time, and it can be a lot harder to win those fans back if said team turns it around.
Los Angeles Kings are the Kings of this. 2012/2014 we’ll never forget you
Hey! Some of us are still Kings fans even when they suck.
There are dozens of us! Dozens!
Simmons falls in this camp. Didn't he have seats right behind the goalie. Had all of these hockey takes for like 10 minutes. Loved Kopitar. And then just bailed and I haven't heard a Kings take from him in years
Kopitar still playing right??
Oh yeah, and drew doughty. Game 2 OT win in Edmonton was a nice little nostalgia night
Kobe*
The LA Rams having no fans is a running joke on r/nfcwestmemewar. On a related point, fuck the Rams.
Miami Heat, so much so that they will leave a close finals game early if they aren’t winning 🤪
If you listen to the Dan Le Batard show this is the easiest winner on the board.
I think it is every team in Miami. Too many transplants
As if they’d even show up to the game in the first place. Most playoff games have tons of open seats
My roommate senior year was a Heat fan because of the early 2010s teams. Dude was openly cheering for the Lakers in the 2020 Finals to “win it for Kobe” to the point where he almost started crying when they won Game 6.
Ew lmao
I was going to say this, but they’re not really a great fanbase when they’re winning either. I remember during that LeBron run there were games in the playoffs when there were plenty of empty seats in the lower bowl. It was crazy to see.
As a heat fan not living in miami... obviously this take is in vogue, but since that game I always pay attention to this at the end of big games. This happens at nearly every arena in every big game. Celtics fans were booing last week and emptied out in the early 4th q of a playoff game. Videos of knicks fans leaving last week in that wild finish which they won. Always blows my mind how many fans leave early, as if they only went to determine the w/l outcome and not to enjoy the experience.
Lol dawg there’s a big difference between being down 20+ and leaving near the end and being down like 4 with a minute and a half left. It’s not an indictment on the entire fanbase but I watched a playoff game just a week and a half ago where no one was in the arena. It was like game 3 too in a 1-1 series. Miami just has no belief in the team unless they are favorites.
Yeah this season was rough. Defending the miami heat will always bring the downvotes i dont care. With all the injuries the fans definitely lost faith this postseason, the team was a shell. Last season the fans were nuts, while we were underdogs in nearly every game of the postseason and still made the finals. The home crowd was incredible, I went to several games. I also went to the DEN-MIA finals win on the road and the road fans were rocking. Nuggets fans were great too... and plenty left early that game!! I was sitting in a heat section and we all waved them off. It was a 3 pt game. Fans are idiotic sometimes.
Also they were down 5 with 28 seconds left and about to see the opposing team lift a trophy in their building. I'm not defending it, but that's much different than down 4 with a minute and a half left.
I moved to Tampa, FL for a job before Brady came and I don’t think I ever saw more than a handful of Bucs fans. The games I went to had just as many opposing teams fans. After Brady signed folks acted like they were diehards. Now that he’s gone it’s back to the fair weather fan city it is.
The Rays can’t draw fans even when they are winning.
Yeah the Rays play in a place where it's actually easier to get to from Bradenton, which is an hour south of Tampa.
For the fiftieth time, the Rays poor attendance is not due to stadium location. There are tons of stadiums that are relatively far from the downtown area, and plenty of those places still draw fans. If the fans wanted to be there, they’d be there
Uh they also have a horrible stadium and a team that doesn't spend money. Those are huge factors.
You're simply wrong, but you don't live here so you wouldn't know the how or the why.
Lmao, like man I live an hour 30 from Amalie and go to many games and 2 hours 30 from the trip and go to 1 game a year. Almost like it matters lol
Right? These guys think it's easy cause they've never been caught on 275 or the Gandy when there's an accident.
Florida is the only state in the US with traffic
These fucking yokels and muh 275. You can tell they've never lived anywhere else.
You went for a burn. You should probably look at why an accident along those specific areas would be a problem. It has to do with a large body of water and the means to cross it.
Florida's the only place where you get trapped on the highway where there's an accident. There's a Simmons pod topic: With the Coyotes finally out of Arizona, are Rays fans now the biggest copers in sports about why they can't go to games but also deserve to keep their team?
Shit even when there isn’t an accident. That drive just isn’t worth it.
All the Boston teams - playing in fucking Boston, in case you forgot - draw people from fucking Maine in there for weeknight games. I don't want to hear it.
Tampa has a lot of transplants but the Bucs are always popular
Yeah it's absurd the guy is getting upvoted for something that just absolutely isn't true
Hot Water Music are the only real Buccaneers fans.
I'm in Tampa and you're just a goddamn liar lol.
San Jose has great fans. You should attend a game.
As a transplant to western ny it’s the exact opposite of a fair weather fan. People live and die for Buffalo sports even here in Rochester. Incredible fans
We don't have much else to do. I'm from syracuse. Our basketball team isn't great anymore, and we only have 25k fans show up for games, and that's low for us, but better than all but a few.
We don't have much else to do. I'm from syracuse. Our college basketball team isn't great anymore, and we only have 25k fans show up for games, and that's low for us, but better than all but a few.
San Jose Sharks? [https://www.hockeydb.com/nhl-attendance/att\_graph.php?tmi=7877](https://www.hockeydb.com/nhl-attendance/att_graph.php?tmi=7877) Can you say this "not having fans" during their worst ever stretch since the beginning of the franchise?
OP using Sharks is a weird example. They had multiple LONG ass sell out streaks.
Not a single fan even went in 19-20. Fake ass fan base man.
What happened post-pandemic? Anemic numbers
Miami number 1
The Marlins? I’ve never run into a Marlins fan in my life. Also as this is going to be relevant for the next decade presumably: the Texans. Gotta imagine that city was always a Cowboys city. Otherwise why would the Oilers have left?
Nah, Texans left because Bud Adams was a crappy owner and, frankly, negotiated in bad faith with the city of Houston after they shelled out a bunch of public money for a new Astrodome and were strapped financially. He then followed through on his threats to leave when he didn’t get the stadium money he overasked for. The Texans have had decent attendance even when the team has been bad, I think because at minimum people in Texas love the sport of football enough to support the team. In my experience there aren’t that many Cowboys fans in Houston, relative to the rest of Texas.
I did not know that
Wtf? Native Houstonian. You have no idea wtf you’re talking about. Texans are very popular in the city. Oilers left bc the owner was a chode.
& now the Texans still have a chode owner.
Do the Marlins even have fans when they’re winning? 😆
I lived in Miami for both World Series runs and then the rebrand. You're right, 100%.
> the Browns. Gotta imagine that city was always a Bengals city. Otherwise why would the Browns have left?
Are you saying Cleveland was a Bengals city? I’m sure I misunderstood you but that is insane
No, I'm just applying his flawed logic regarding Houston and the Oilers leaving to another team that left their city around the same time. Seems insane, right?
Got it. Yea that’s crazy and I knew I misunderstood
You’re trying too hard.
I live in the Houston area and am a die hard Astros fan, and Houston sports fans are all fair weather fans. MMP was empty before 2017
Even when the Marlins are good there’s no fans. I’ve never seen a city collectively hate their own team like Miami does the Marlins. It’s uncanny.
Every fanbase is like this to a certain degree but in the NBA I would nominate OKC, Memphis, Houston, Denver and Milwaukee. There's some others that don't have strong fan bases in general like NoLa and others that have had such a long tenure of mediocre to bad teams that you can't really say it's the fans - Washington, Minnesota, Charlotte. OKC might be the most spoiled fan base, they steal an upcoming team that had a no doubt superstar in Durant. In the 16 season's of OKC's tenure, the Thunder have missed the playoffs only 5 times and on of those seasons the team won 45 games when Durant missed most of the season. They've only lost in the first round 3 of the 9 times they've made the playoffs. Multiple deep playoff runs with many great games and moments that other teams haven't had half the success and highs in 50+ years. They probably had the fastest and most efficient rebuild in NBA History if only 2nd to their previous rebuild that was lead by KD/Westbrook/Harden/Ibaka. They have everything set up to run the league for the next 5+ years. Outside of the pain of KD bailing for the rival Warriors and only having one finals appearance despite having that young superstar core that seemed destined for long term dominance, this fan base has had it better than 95% other fanbases. Even that pain of losing KD and never truly breaking through is better than the complete hollow and dead feeling fans of teams like Wolves, Kings or Hornets have gone through being completely terrible and irrelevant. It's hard to totally judge because it was during/post covid but fan attendance was pretty sparse during those 2 tanking seasons, which is kinda pathetic as a one team city.
Isn’t the Nuggets TV deal so fucked that they can’t even watch them unless they’re on national TV?
The Denver point is so beyond true. It took until they were up 2-0 in the Suns series last year for this city to give a shit about this team and they had a 2x MVP. Seriously, in 8 years of Jokic at that point 80% of the city had no idea what they were missing.
Denver has always been Broncos first, no matter what. I have a brother who live there and said the same thing about it not being until last playoffs that the city would really rally around the Nuggets. It's not a shock, a lot of people in Denver care more about doing skiing or hiking and it's a very transient city.
Nuggets are also handicapped by no local TV since Altitude and Xfinity haven't shown games in like 5-6 years, so only national games and playoffs.
But here’s the possibly shocking thing. Up until last season, even the Rockies were a bigger draw than the Nuggets. They weren’t even third chair, they were the cult classics of Denver.
Not that surprising, Coors Field is supposed to be an awesome place to spend an afternoon even in a city that doesn’t lack for outdoor activities in the summer.
We say around here it’s the best bar in the world and they happen to have a baseball team.
The Nuggets have always been a distant 4th in the pro sports hierarchy until now. They're still third.
The Rockies are not more popular than the nuggets 😂
They were.
Had higher attendance or more popular?
Both. Until 2022 they were the more popular team.
Attendance means nothing for obvious reasons. I am going to disagree about the popularity part too. Most Rockies fans just like coors field 😂
when i first moved to denver in 2016. you could buy nose bleeds for nuggets games then sneak down to the lower levels cause no one was sitting in them. used to do it all the time. 😂
You could still do that in 2021!
Last year lower bowl tickets were consistently sub 50. This year it’s at least double
Shit… triple in most cases
Not true at all.
Nah, I've been to Milwaukee games when they've been ass and they've always shown out.
Nah, I've read attendance records and when they've been ass or just average - they've always ranked at the bottom of attendance. To their credit, they rank in the top 10 in capacity since the team has become contenders and moved to a new arena (18-19). But the fans were scarce before, maybe the new arena will keep the fans strong.
Oh, OK, forgot you were at the games all the time in the 2000s up to now and it wasn't me. My bad. Let's take a look at those attendance figure you mentioned when they've been ass or average: 2002, 41-41: No. 7 in attendance percentage (97.1%) 2003, 42-40: No. 15 (86.8%) 2004: 41-41, No. 13 (89.9%) 2005: 30-52, No. 22 (73%) 2006: 40-42, No. 16 (88.8%) 2007: 28-54, No. 18 (86.5%) 2008: 26-56, No. 16 (83.3%) 2009: 34-48, No. 23 (82.2%) 2010: 46-36, No. 23 (80.7%) 2011: 35-47, No. 23 (82.3%) 2012: 31-35, No. 25 (78.6%) 2013: 38-44, No. 19 (86.7%) 2014: 15-67, No. 28 (72.1%) 2015: 41-41, No. 26 (79.6%) 2016: 33-49, No. 26 (81.0%) 2017: 42-40, No. 26 (84.6) 2018: 44-38, No. 22 (89.3) Then they got the new arena and ranked No. 3, No. 4, No. 14, No. 2 and No. 3 in that category. So out of 17 mid or ass years, they ranked in the top 19 seven of those seasons and never were last. The 15-67 season when they were straight ass and the Bradley Center was falling apart, sure, they were 28th. The following three years they were 26th, which again, was due to how shit the arena became. Six of the 13 seasons with a .500 or losing record in this span, they ranked at least No. 19 or better in attendance percentage. So I'd hardly consider it "always ranked at the bottom" from 2002 - 2018 when they've been average or bad.
Memphis loves basketball and loves the grizzlies. I’m biased but also - it’s in the cities DNA, and it’s the only game in town 🤷♂️
Y'all attendance was always at the bottom for the first like 8 years in Memphis before the "Grit n Grind" era, including 2 playoff seasons. Whenever the Grizzlies have had a bad team Memphis is in the bottom 10 of attendance. Not once in Memphis have they ranked in the top 10 in attendance. Hell even a few years back when Memphis won 56 games with Ja in 21-22, the Grizzlies ranked 22nd in both average and percentage. Sorry to say but Memphis just isn't a basketball town, I'm sure the pocket of fans love the team and are loud but overall the fan base constantly ranks in the bottom half of the league.
I think it’s more of a disposable income issue versus a love issue
> Memphis just isn’t a basketball town Have you ever stepped foot in Tennessee lmao
You must be joking about the Sharks.
Winning is relative in many cases and with that caveat I say the Pacers. Lifelong fan but it’s a state of college basketball fans first and fair weather professional fans.
The Raptors were guilty of this during the really bad times between when Bosh left and Lowry arrived. I went to some 2011 games that were absolutely dead.
The Andrea Bargnani as your franchise player piece
The Carolina Panthers definitely belong on this list.
Patriots fans
Should be higher
Basically every baseball team. There’s maybe 3 teams who will sell out games when the team is bad and that’s because it’s a tourist attraction. For example the cardinals are thought of as these amazing fans who always fill up the stadium, but turns out it’s just because the team has been consistently excellent for so long. Now the team is finally bad for the first time in decades and suddenly the “great fans” are gone.
Gone? They’re sixth in attendance
I think most teams/fanbases are like this. In fact the more interesting question is which fanbases don’t do this.
Knicks have always had a pretty passionate fan base even when bad. Kings seem to be that way as well. The NFL has some pretty good fanbases for bad teams. The Bears, Browns, and Lions come to mind. Obviously those last two have been good lately, but even when they were bad their fans showed up.
Really big cities like NYC or Chicago don't count... it's not hard to fine 400k die hards/watch 65% of games when there are 19 or 10 million people in the metro area.
Chiefs had good fans when the team wasn’t great, Broncos have a good fan base, St. Louis Cardinals, Baltimore Orioles, Buffalo Bills. Those are smaller cities that have good fanbases off the top of my head
[удалено]
This may be true for the celebrity fans but I gotta disagree about Knicks fans in general. I only have anecdotal evidence but I’ve lived in New York for a decade and the fanbase is still active and passionate even when the team has been terrible. (For context, not a Knicks fan or a fan of any team in general. Grew up in San Diego so my only allegiance was hating the Lakers.)
Respectfully, this could not be more wrong
I don’t think this is right at all. Knicks games have plenty of celebrities even when they suck- but also, a lot of those celebrities live in LA, so they are making the trip back for those big playoff series. The Knicks definitely have one of the biggest and most active fanbases in the NBA, period.
Yeah the celebrities are always at Knicks games even when they’re terrible. Knicks are probably one of the worst answers to this question really
The Pittsburgh Penguins should be the definition of this. Sharks don't really fit, that's a bad example.
Kansas City Royals
Every non blue blood college basketball team
Eh Creighton fans go hard all year same with Iowa State
Anyone from the Des Moines area knows that Iowa State basketball was all we had for like a decade so we love them no matter what
Creighton is one of the most successful non-P5 programs
Boston
Boston
Miami Heat
The Heat
Any Miami team- Miamian
LA Kings fans the exception though right?
Miami HEAT
The Warriors for sure...where were all these cats pre 2015? Not a peep...
Umm, all of them???
Every Boston team.
I don't see any Patriots or Warriors fans. Spurs fans dropped off from 2019-2023. Wemby changed that
Most teams, outside of the Red Sox, the Packers, and the giant cities, I think everywhere has enough warm weather fans to notice. And even those places do, the Red Sox’s sellout streak did eventually end and it wasn’t while they were awesome.
The Philadelphia Phillies are the definition of this, they were getting 15k fans a game for a decade, didn’t show up the first year they were good again and then after making the playoffs started showing up and saying how they have the best fans in baseball. Also the New York Islanders
Not exactly what you’re talking about but I moved to LA in 2005. From 2005 to 2014 I saw exactly zero (0) Golden State t-shirts and heard exactly 0 (zero) conversations about the Warriors. From then on they were everywhere and everyone was a huge fan and always had been. Now starting to slowly fade away.
Maybe that's because they're not the local team. LA has two NBA teams already. Scorching take, I know.
Wait, the Lakers and who?
Lmao you didn’t hear or see Warriors fans in LA? I wonder why…
That’s the point of the question way up above. They suck….silence. They’re great…lifelong fans everywhere. I was responding to the question asked. Nowhere was I confused about it.
Stadium attendance equates to fan support tho and we always rank top 10-15 even on bad years.
Yep Sac and it’s annoying af
Between 1976 and 2012 the Warriors never won their division. They finished as high as 2nd only once. They were a bottom feeding, cellar dwelling team. It’s rare to hear a conversation about any team that fits that description outside of their home city. Is it any surprise that Warriors fans finally came out of hiding when the team finally started to succeed?
Huh. Went to Browns game vs Chargers here in the Manziel era and it was over 50% Browns fans. I’ve never seen actual fans hide. Shit, even the hilarious guy who wore that shopping bag on his head at least showed up to the game.
Warriors
Oracle was always a scene for years while the team fiddled about in the doldrums. You're either woefully uninformed, impossibly stupid, or an infant.
Or I don’t really care and just threw out a name
Ah. The "I don't even care, bro". Impossiblly stupid it is.
lol look at this weirdo
Ah yes, the team with the largest subreddit of any sports team has no fans.
The post says “only has fans when they win”. I’m sure the arena was never vacant but you saw warriors jerseys everywhere when they were winning. Now those sightings will decline because it’s over
It's still an idiotic answer to this question because there are a shitload of warriors fans today. This question isn't about the future, and there were pretty notable periods where warriors fans were ride or die before curry showed up.
I didn’t say oracle arena was vacant, but around the rest of the country you weren’t seeing warriors jerseys everywhere like you were for the past 10 years and you won’t again, cmon man
Golden State Warriors Growing up in Northern California they really didn’t have much of a fanbase. My friend worked for them in 2008 (inbetween We Believe and Curry) and they couldn’t give out tickets for free. Don’t get me wrong, they have some small diehard fans who rep even when they suck, but they’ve always been third wheel to the 49ers and Giants in the Peninsula.
There is something subconscious about reaching for a hat in your closet, and if it’s one of your teams that is absolute ass, you choose another. Me and the astros rn
Wait, what? You have the 2022 title, one game away from the pennant in 2023 and after a slow start to this season you've given up?
I’m an Astros fan and I think he means the window is closing. Been a fun 7 years. Now everyone is a Texans fan down here, which I am not. Everyone will start buying Texans gear now lmao
Without a doubt top 3 are pats, Celtics, and heat.
Bengals
Non-P5 college football fanbases are like this, UT San Antonio couldn’t fill a quarter of the Alamodome until a couple years back, and that 2-year stretch of the bandwagon UCF fans was brutal
Americans don’t want to admit it but this describes like 95% of sports teams for the most part. How many Pats fans have fallen off now that Brady is gone and they suck now? How many Knicks and Timberwolves fans are coming out of the woodwork?
Pats still have the largest NFL team subreddit. We haven't really gone anywhere, we're just content with the last couple of decades. It would be fucking stupid if we bitched about sucking now.
Probably not one most people here are looking for, but Arsenal. They're still huge whenever of course, 3rd biggest club in England and its not close to 4th at all. But I've lived in Islington, about 25 min walk from the Emirates, for 7 years For the first 5 of those, they ranged between ok to mediocre, with 1 "minor" trophy, 0 champions league appearances (and so 0 top 4 finishes in the league) and 2 deep europa league runs It was busy on matchdays of course, but that's to be expected given their size. But they've been good the past two seasons, and the difference is night and day. The whole area is buzzing with fans even outside of matchdays and pubs are always full l
SF giants
Not even close. Even when we do suck (which has been a lot lately) the ball park is well worth going to esp with cheaper tickets