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Any cities you wish had a team (not in Canada)?

PistolPete said:
If memory serves me correctly, aren't the more affluent and populated areas west of downtown Phoenix but south of Glendale?
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The most affluent municipality is Paradise Valley, which is in the northeast, surrounded by Scottsdale (also an affluent municipality). To the south of Scottsdale is Tempe, where Arizona State University is located.

The southwestern part is… well, Buckeye, so not really. Or Laveen (technically a region of Phoenix proper), consisting mostly of… dairy farms.
 
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Realistically?
- Houston
- Phoenix
- Atlanta

Ideally?
- Quebec City

Hometown dreaming?
- Kansas City

Locations I think could be fun:
- GTA team #2
- Portland
- Wisconsin
- Austin (only if no Houston)
- San Diego

Super longshot but interesting:
- Omaha (would be exceedingly small market but literally no other pro comp and underrated hockey scene with the Mavs)

Not for me:
- OKC (very small market already occupied by the Thunder)
- Any other Canadian city outside QC and GTA
 
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WatchfulElm said:
I don't understand why none of the big 4 sports has a team in Mexico. I mean, a MLB team would be a surefire success there, no? What's stopping it from happening?
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Not enough $ to spend to be able to support a decent payroll?

There are a lot of people but it's still relatively poor to the U.S. and Canada.

MLS will probably take all of the best players from Liga MX very soon.
 
MrLunatik said:
they'd need a new stadium for one... and it'd have to be a larger field than other MLB diamonds because of the elevation, even with using humidors to control teh temperature of the balls when they've played games in Mexico the number of home runs is insane. In addition, the nearest team would be 900+ miles away, and if they were put in that division, one of their division rivals (Seattle) would be more than 2800 miles away
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If it ever became serious, Monterrey could be an option.
 
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FissionFire said:
As a former resident of Portland let me assure you it is NOT a great sports city. There are a tiny segment of fans of each sport but overall the city residents couldn’t care less if their teams up and left. Most wouldn’t even notice. The most popular teams in Portland is the Timbers (soccer).
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Portland loves soccer?

Slap me and call me shocked. Who'd have a thunk Portland with it's zeitgeist is a soccer-loving city
 
Summer Rose said:
The most affluent municipality is Paradise Valley, which is in the northeast, surrounded by Scottsdale (also an affluent municipality). To the south of Scottsdale is Tempe, where Arizona State University is located.

The southwestern part is… well, Buckeye, so not really. Or Laveen (technically a region of Phoenix proper), consisting mostly of… dairy farms.
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Yeah, now that you mentioned it that is ringing a bell.

Seems like a similar situation to Atlanta- need to find the best location for the team relative to potential fan base.
 
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PistolPete said:
Portland loves soccer?

Slap me and call me shocked. Who'd have a thunk Portland with it's zeitgeist is a soccer-loving city
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In a relative sense to basketball, baseball, football, and hockey then yes Portland loves soccer. In an absolute sense of sports fandom compared to population they don’t care at all. You tend to see more Timbers gear than Trailblazers but that’s not saying much when maybe once or twice a day you will someone wearing sports merchandise. Comparatively to growing up in Detroit and Chicago and living in Las Vegas now each of these cities has more fans of individual teams than Portland has sports fans total. I’m honestly surprised the Trailblazers never moved. Seattle is a better sports town and they have historically struggled to maintain fan engagement and ever lost their basketball team it OKC 15 years ago.
 
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TheDawnOfANewTage said:
San Fran. I know SJ is right there, but f*** it. SJ draws and has a good hockey culture growing.

Also Taipei.
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Would've been awesome to be able to even catch an AHL game in SF or Oakland but they can't do it because the cost of living is too high. They basically fund housing for the Barracuda players.

I found minimal hockey attention in SF proper unless the Sharks were like in the third round. It's a Warriors and Giants city. Maybe one day if the Warriors start struggling and need a co-tenant?
 
PistolPete said:
Yeah, now that you mentioned it that is ringing a bell.

Seems like a similar situation to Atlanta- need to find the best location for the team relative to potential fan base.
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Pretty much. I heard once that they did a survey of the home address of season ticket holders based on ZIP code once, and it was mostly in the east. That was a while ago (obviously while the Coyotes existed), so I’m just going off my own memory and don’t have a link to a source though.

Another way to look at it is the location of the ice rinks in the area. When I lived there there were six rinks. Four were on the east side (Tempe, Chandler, Scottsdale, Gilbert), one in Phoenix proper (but on the east side of the city still), and one out west (Peoria). This was before Mullett Arena existed, which is also in Tempe. The other Tempe rink (Oceanside Ice Arena) has shut down now, and they opened another one in Mesa. I don’t live there anymore though.

Also, for reference, the Scottsdale rink served as the practice facility for the Coyotes, and most of the players lived nearby in Scottsdale. The reasons why the arena wound up in Glendale have been discussed to death, would derail this thread entirely, and I don’t feel like getting into that topic anyway because it would make me really upset and while I would attempt to be concise as possible I’d still end up probably typing several paragraphs at minimum, so I just won’t.

But a very short and humorous/sarcastic summary is that the people who thought it was a good idea to put the arena in Glendale were probably smoking crack.
 
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KovalchukFistPump said:
Would've been awesome to be able to even catch an AHL game in SF or Oakland but they can't do it because the cost of living is too high. They basically fund housing for the Barracuda players.

I found minimal hockey attention in SF proper unless the Sharks were like in the third round. It's a Warriors and Giants city. Maybe one day if the Warriors start struggling and need a co-tenant?
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I think the money there makes it work- absolutely wouldn’t have picked SJ to have success, but they have a thriving youth program and market. SF has massive problems, but it also has young tech bros with disposable income from all over the US.

Oh, and ftr- Taipei is a joke suggestion, but hockey in Taiwan would be dope. They have like 8 cities of around the same size on this gorgeous mountainous/beachy island, it’d just make for a hell of a tourney/small league locale.
 
PistolPete said:
If it ever became serious, Monterrey could be an option.
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I think Monterrey would be the best option. It's the richest city in Mexico, the most developed, the metro population is over 5.3m, and unlike Mexico City, the elevation is only about 1770 feet, so they wouldn't need to find extreme ways to reduce HRs
 
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I don't think it's in the cards for Portland right now. I'd say San Diego makes the most sense to me.
 
TheDawnOfANewTage said:
San Fran. I know SJ is right there, but f*** it. SJ draws and has a good hockey culture growing.

Also Taipei.
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The Spiders!



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FissionFire said:
In a relative sense to basketball, baseball, football, and hockey then yes Portland loves soccer. In an absolute sense of sports fandom compared to population they don’t care at all. You tend to see more Timbers gear than Trailblazers but that’s not saying much when maybe once or twice a day you will someone wearing sports merchandise. Comparatively to growing up in Detroit and Chicago and living in Las Vegas now each of these cities has more fans of individual teams than Portland has sports fans total. I’m honestly surprised the Trailblazers never moved. Seattle is a better sports town and they have historically struggled to maintain fan engagement and ever lost their basketball team it OKC 15 years ago.
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Losing their basketball team had nothing to do with “fan engagement”
 
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Lieutenant Bookman said:
Losing their basketball team had nothing to do with “fan engagement”
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Exactly.

Anyone who thinks that the Sonics left Seattle because of fan engagement should really watch some of this:



It's very well documented and put together.

The situation is basically the plot of "Major League" except that the fan engagement stayed and the team moved anyhow.
 
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In the unlikely scenario of a sustainable fanbase:

Mexico City would go crazy hard but sticking to the US, just New Orleans come to mind. Only because it's New Orleans and one of the few unique cities in the country. Should really have a baseball team too.
 
MrLunatik said:
they'd need a new stadium for one... and it'd have to be a larger field than other MLB diamonds because of the elevation, even with using humidors to control teh temperature of the balls when they've played games in Mexico the number of home runs is insane. In addition, the nearest team would be 900+ miles away, and if they were put in that division, one of their division rivals (Seattle) would be more than 2800 miles away
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TIL that Mexico City is ~2000ft higher than Denver 😲
I imagine American ticket prices would be pretty crazy for most people too
 
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