In a survey of 419 U.S. cities categorized on population-size, Tampa ranks No. 29. That’s according to yet another WalletHub study released on Wednesday.
The only other Florida city to rank higher on an overall table was Miami (No. 13), and the next closest Sunshine State municipality was Orlando (No. 32).
St. Petersburg ranked No. 218 overall, but saw a higher position (No. 56) when sorted into other midsize cities (“100,000 to 300,000 people,” according to this study). Tampa was No. 25 when lumped in with large cities of “more than 300,000 people.”
In deciding how to rank the best sports cities, WalletHub combined the results from previous rankings based on football (Tampa was No. 26), hockey (Tampa was No. 16), baseball (St. Petersburg was No. 14), soccer (St. Petersburg at No. 41, Tampa at No. 98) and basketball (Tampa was No. 272).
Each sports category was then assigned a weight corresponding with the total percentage of adults in the U.S. who claim to follow that particular sport, according to The Global Sports Media Consumption Report.
Because some adults claim to be fans of more than one sport, the sum of all the weights is greater than 100 percent.
The study did not specifically say whether it considered how many fair-weather fans existed in the cities.
In explaining what makes a good sports city, George Solomon said that passion, history and winning teams are what matters.
“Philadelphia, very passionate for its teams. Even for losing teams. Some fans can be very rough,” Solomon, Director of the Shirley Povich Center for Sports Journalism at University of Maryland said.
When asked about whether publicly-funded sports stadiums make fiscal sense for cities, Solomon did say that they had the potential to turn a city around and generate economic development.
“Particularly with baseball and basketball [and] hockey,” he added. Solomon also brought up a sore subject for Tampa fans: Boston.
“[Fans have been] in love with Red Sox since 1967. The Celtics [dominated] in the 1960’s, [it’s] a hockey town and pretty excited over the Patriots’ success,” he said.
And the worst part?
Boston is No. 1 on the list. Gross. Look at the heat map below.
This article appears in Nov 29 – Dec 6, 2018.
