Best Fans in the NFL: Patriots?

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Not surprised. The Patriots replaced the Cowboys as "America's team" a long time ago.
 
FWIW, here is a link to an article about the study, along with the ranking for all 32 teams.

https://scholarblogs.emory.edu/esma/

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Big/Sky/Fly said:
Not really...they have a good local fan base, but, outside of KC, not so much.

Raiders on the other hand...I see a lot of their NFL merch all over.
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The merch doesn't mean much. I've see people wearing old Montreal Expos or Hartford Whalers jerseys. The Raiders black jerseys just look cool and if you're thinking old school throwback, they had a badass rep once.

I thought the same thing about the Chiefs when I looked at this. I lived there and because there's fewer other things, the local fan base was very into them. It seemed like there were more people wearing red to the office on Fridays and midwestern fan things like that. It could be that if they're using a large distance to calculate the # of people who should be their fan base (like you can go from Maine to central CT to find hardcore Boston fans), that brings their numbers down. People in rural Missouri & Kansas aren't as tied to the Kansas City teams.

Also, the study said,

"These models are used to determine which cities' fans are more willing to spend or follow their teams after controlling for factors like market size and short-term variations in performance," he wrote.

How can they control for short term variations in performance when the Patriots have been in the playoffs 13/15 (and the 2 times they didn't make it was by a tie breaker).
 
I guess whatever the major sport is, Boston fans will always be near the top of the list. It's a big area which is genuinely sports mad and the history of success adds to this as well. The Patriots have a lot of fans outside of NE as well, big NE diaspora in the US, the game against the Chargers in SD showed that, the support was incredible. And NE is a wealthy area as well compared to many other regions and fans will typically spend more cash.

I bet the Seachickens fans are absolutely apoplectic over this ROFL

12s my ass, they couldn't even get to number 12 on the list!
 
The article specifically talks about the Chiefs and Steelers.

The Chiefs struggle because the fan support doesn’t match the team’s performance. The Chiefs capacity utilization rate ranks 17th in the league despite a winning record and low ticket prices.
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The Steelers

The one result that gives me the most doubt is for the Pittsburgh Steelers. The Steelers have long been considered one of the league premier teams and brands. The Steelers have a history of championships and have been known to turn opposing stadiums into seas of yellow and black. So why are the Steelers ranked 18th?

A comparison between the Steelers and the Eagles highlights the underlying issues. Last year the Steelers had an average attendance of 64,356 and had an average ticket price of $84 (from ESPN and Team Market Report). In comparison the Eagles averaged 69,483 fans with an average price of $98.69. In terms of filling capacity the Steelers were at 98.3% compared to the Eagles at 102.8%. The key is that the greater support enjoyed by the Eagles was despite a much worse record.

One issue to consider is that of pricing. It may well be that the Steelers ownership makes a conscious effort to underprice relative to what the market would allow. The high attendance rates across the NFL do suggest that many teams could profitably raise prices. It’s entirely reasonable to argue that the Steelers relationship to the Pittsburgh community results in a policy of pricing below market.

In past years the Steelers have been our social media champions. This past year did see a bit of a dip. In terms of the Social Media Equity rankings the Steelers dropped to 5th. As a point of comparison, the Steelers have about 1.3 million Twitter followers compared to 2.4 million for the Patriots and 1.7 million for the Cowboys.
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bideau said:
The article specifically talks about the Chiefs and Steelers.
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That's the means they used to calculate it, but I bet if you only looked at people who live within 25 miles of the stadiums, the Chiefs would score much higher. How do they decide which people in the metro NY area are Giants fans and which are Jets fans? Metro Philly has a lot more people than metro Pittsburgh, but it's the Steelers fans who travel better.

Obviously, the Pats have an incredibly long run of success and a region with strong sports fans, but overall, I don't think these results mean much.
 
Mark_Henderson said:
That's the means they used to calculate it, but I bet if you only looked at people who live within 25 miles of the stadiums, the Chiefs would score much higher. How do they decide which people in the metro NY area are Giants fans and which are Jets fans? Metro Philly has a lot more people than metro Pittsburgh, but it's the Steelers fans who travel better.

Obviously, the Pats have an incredibly long run of success and a region with strong sports fans, but overall, I don't think these results mean much.
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Despite protestations from statisticians, we all know that the are lies, damned lies and statistics. :)
 
Mark_Henderson said:
The merch doesn't mean much. I've see people wearing old Montreal Expos or Hartford Whalers jerseys. The Raiders black jerseys just look cool and if you're thinking old school throwback, they had a badass rep once.

I thought the same thing about the Chiefs when I looked at this. I lived there and because there's fewer other things, the local fan base was very into them. It seemed like there were more people wearing red to the office on Fridays and midwestern fan things like that. It could be that if they're using a large distance to calculate the # of people who should be their fan base (like you can go from Maine to central CT to find hardcore Boston fans), that brings their numbers down. People in rural Missouri & Kansas aren't as tied to the Kansas City teams.

Also, the study said,

"These models are used to determine which cities' fans are more willing to spend or follow their teams after controlling for factors like market size and short-term variations in performance," he wrote.

How can they control for short term variations in performance when the Patriots have been in the playoffs 13/15 (and the 2 times they didn't make it was by a tie breaker).
Click to expand...

The Missery/Kansass locals are much more into their college teams...
 
Roberto71 said:
I guess whatever the major sport is, Boston fans will always be near the top of the list. It's a big area which is genuinely sports mad and the history of success adds to this as well. The Patriots have a lot of fans outside of NE as well, big NE diaspora in the US, the game against the Chargers in SD showed that, the support was incredible. And NE is a wealthy area as well compared to many other regions and fans will typically spend more cash.

I bet the Seachickens fans are absolutely apoplectic over this ROFL

12s my ass, they couldn't even get to number 12 on the list!
Click to expand...

Most of the Seachickens fans are newly minted...since Petey took ovah.
 
Big/Sky/Fly said:
The Missery/Kansass locals are much more into their college teams...
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That's true for basketball, not so much football. The people in the KC suburbs are strong Chiefs fans. The problem is that if you go 30, 40 miles away, it's serious farmland and there aren't as many people who travel into a city for events. It's one of the smallest metro areas with pro teams and there isn't much between there & Denver or St. Louis, or to the north & south either.

If you looked at the home addresses of season ticket holders, I bet Pats' fans have one of the longer average distances traveled for games, while Chiefs' fans are probably one of the shortest.

This study doesn't do a good job of separating how avid a team's fans are vs. how many of them there are. Ticket prices is a bad stat to use. People pay a lot more to go to a movie in San Francisco than Alabama - it doesn't mean they like movies more.
 
dchester said:
FWIW, here is a link to an article about the study, along with the ranking for all 32 teams.

https://scholarblogs.emory.edu/esma/

2016complete.jpg
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Ratbirds ahead of the Redskins? The Redskins are a historic, original franchise with a huge national following. They are represented historically by guys like Sammy Baugh, Sonny Jurgenson, John Riggins, Art Monk and Darrell Green. The ratbirds are the second most popular team in their own state and their most famous player was part of a double homicide. Not to mention that the average Ratbird fan eats their own boogers.

Better fan base my ass.
 
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