The New York metropolitan area- showing the current location of its professional teams. Metropolitan New York contains at least 3 distinct sport markets. From left to right, Northeastern New Jersey, New York City, and Long Island.
I thought it would be wise to start updating the fans of True Champion Sports what projects I am working on and what’s going on behind the scenes as I build TCS.com towards my vision- to create the Ultimate Team Sports Encyclopedia and one of the very best sport resources on the planet.
I’ve been asked by a few fans why there wasn’t much updating and new content to the site during August. Well, the answer is that I spent a month working behind the scenes on 2 major projects that will be brought to life a little ways down the road.
Below I give a brief overview of the most important research I was conducting that kept me busy throughout August.
TCS Project: Defining Sport Cities & Sport Markets
A necessity for one of my major planned contributions to the sports community requires that I become a geographical expert on North America’s populous regions. This is essential so that I can fully understand and define Sport Markets, and how fanbases think about their teams, especially in complex situations.
The ultimate goal of this project is to be able to quantify how Sport Cities/ Sport Markets perform versus one another. For example, answering questions like- where does Toronto rank as a professional sport city all-time? How does Boston compare to New York since 1950? (And so on).
To carry out this project with a tremendous amount of accuracy, I had to conduct a ton of research to learn the distance between cities, populations of cities and their metropolitan areas, etc. This type of information is critical in order to answer essential questions, such as the following:
Example 1
Since 1976 and 1984 respectively, the New York Giants and New York Jets both play in New Jersey, but represent New York.
Is northeastern New Jersey its own sport market? How do fans of these teams in both places feel? Should the Giants and Jets TCS points be split between 2 Sport Markets? If so, what is the most accurate way to divide their points?
Check out the performance history of the Giants in New Jersey
Check out the performance history of the Jets in New Jersey
Example 2
The 49ers now play in San Jose. Technically, they play in the much smaller municipality Santa Clara; but close to the border of San Jose, and only a 15-minute-drive from downtown San Jose.
In mainstream media coverage you never hear San Jose associated with the 49ers- and this is done intentionally to prevent uneducated fans from realizing that Levi’s Stadium is quite a distance from San Francisco and in a different sport market.
How should the 49ers points be divided between these 2 distinct Sport Markets? What is the driving time from downtown San Francisco to Levi’s Stadium?
Check out the performance history of the San Francisco 49ers
Example 3
Until recently, the New York Islanders spent their entire existence in Nassau County. Should this be considered a distinct sport market from New York City? What’s the driving time from the closest borough of NYC? (Queens). Furthermore, do residents of Queens consider themselves more Long Islanders, or New Yorkers?
The mainstream media would only refer to the Islanders home location as Uniondale, New York. However, Uniondale has a population of only 24,000 resisdents and is actually a ‘Census-designated Place’ within the biggest town in the United States- Hempstead, New York. I’m guessing this is the biggest city/town in the USA you’ve never heard of…..with a population of 760,000 residents!!
Why does the media refuse to mention this large town/city adjacent from New York City? What should we call the Islanders long-time sport city/market? How does their move into Brooklyn, (geographically still on Long Island), affect their fanbase/ sport market?
Check out the performance history of the New York Islanders
Example 4
Foxborough, Massachusetts, home of the Patriots since 1971, is closer to Providence, Rhode Island than it is to Boston. The move to the new stadium was such a distance from Boston that the team changed its Geo-Identifier from ‘Boston’ to ‘New England’.
Should the ‘Sport City’ of Boston be receiving 100% of the Patriots points, or should some percentage be going to Providence/ Rhode Island? What is the population of the Providence metropolitan area? Where do the bulk of Patriots fans in the stands come from?
Check out the performance history of the New England Patriots franchise
Example 5
The Florida Panthers moved from downtown Miami to Sunrise, Florida in the late 1990s. They had not fully entrenched themselves as a Miami-based team because they moved north after only playing 5 seasons in Miami. The Miami metropolitan area is unique in that there are more than a dozen cities with large populations that make up this area. The actual city of Miami only had a population of 400,000 in 2010.
Sunrise is a 45-minute-drive from Miami, with a population of only 89,000. With the lack of hardcore hockey fans in this tropical area, how many fans from Miami drive that far to watch the lowly Panthers play?
Fort Lauderdale is only a 20-minute-drive from Sunrise….should this be considered the Panthers’ Sport City? Or should it be the larger area known as Broward County? (Broward makes up the northern 50% of the Miami metropolitan area, and has a regional population of 1.9 million people.)
Check out the performance history of the Florida Panthers in Miami
Check out the performance history of the Florida Panthers in Sunrise/ Broward County
At present, my time and resources can only go so far, while working my “real job” close to full-time. True Champion Sports is certainly in its infancy, and the process of conducting tons of research and quantifying the history of sports will take time.
Please consider helping me get there faster by making a small financial contribution to fund my research and the web development costs that are ongoing. You can also help in other ways by advocating for this site through your social media outlets and follow True Champion Sports on Facebook- (@truechampionsports2016).
