Quote:
Originally Posted by canuckguy
I just went based on population size, not sure what figures go into calculating market size to be honest. Don't people create there own markets anyway?
Is Chicago not bigger than Boston? why can't the cubs or the white soxs spend serious cash? The cubs are not that far behind the redsox's in out of market fans i think. And the redsox nation was only born out of success i believe so why can't another team of similar market share do the same thing? or is NY and Boston the two biggest markets for anything (sports/commerce) in America?
I think the owner is just a big a part as the city you play in. Teams have to earn the fans, do it and your market becomes redsox's nation where you have fans all across the world who have never even been to fenway.
Again I am hardcore Blue jays fan, i just can't begrudge the other teams for spending. I would hate it to be like hockey where everyone is the same, I like rooting against he evil empire!
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You know the completely unique advantage Boston has to get those fans spread all around, right?
The Boston area has one of the highest concentrations of colleges and universities in the country, if not the world. Many of those are colleges that draw from all around the country and the world.
This has led to some very fortunate circumstances: the 1967 Impossible Dream season right as the first waves of Baby Boomers were attending college, for example.
Those people then spread back around the country as Sox fans, and raise families as Sox fans.
That's part of why Boston gets placed up with the Yankees though their market ends up on a similar level with Chicago and Los Angeles and Philadelphia. They have that fan base spread all over the place.
It can happen to other teams to a certain extent (there's a few people around the country who grew up as Orioles fans simply because they were a popular team in the late-60s and 70s), but not to the level Boston can because of that simple quirk of culture and geography.