The Sports Fan Loyalty Index, which measures all the teams in the four Major Leagues, provides an apples-to-apples comparison of the intensity with which fans within a team’s MSA support the home team versus corresponding values for fans of other teams in that market, which is important because fan loyalty correlates very highly with broadcast viewership, merchandise purchase, and ticket revenues. Happier fans as well.
Forbes has the Yankees at #1 and the Mets at #26. Discuss!
Blue-cap tip to @MHealeySports
What a pile of nonsense. TV viewership and merchandise sales??? How in the hell does that measure “Loyalty”?
Forbes should be embarrassed that they published this. Yankees fans are the most loyal? The same fans that couldn’t sell out playoff games last year? And Phillies fans are second? How quickly did that sell out streak end once they were hovering around 3rd place last summer? Real loyal.
The article itself gives the primary reason this “ranking” is bogus – that much of it is based on win-loss records. Winning correlates to higher TV ratings and merchandise sales. Those are hard metrics, but they don’t necessarily define “loyalty.”
The only way to truly rank “loyalty” based on the metrics discussed in the article would be if every team played .500 ball for several seasons. Of course that will never happen.
The biggest joke is how the Marlins are not the bottom team. The Yankees certainly do not deserve #1 and the Phillies do not deserve #2 but not having the Marlins as #30 is a joke. New stadium and they were have filled. Doing BOGO and all you can eat for Opening Day and they can’t sell out.
This is bullshit.
teams who have won recently have most loyal fans….hmmmm…
methodology flaw, indeed.
I thought loyalty was loyalty. How can you rise or dip in this. You’re either loyal or not. This is stupid.
Uh, 26th?
Maybe try top five.