Sports’ most recognized brand

December 2, 2008 by Benjamin Kabak 42 Comments

Via The Biz of Baseball comes a short story sure to warm the heart of any Yankee fan. According to a recent sports branding study, the Yankees are the most popular out-of-market team in the U.S. They lead a pack of high-profile sports franchises atop the Packers, Red Sox, Cowboys and Lakers. This popularity certainly is just another sign that MLB needs the Yanks and that fans love to watch the team they love to hate.

Yank Crank 20

Hank was right! Red Sox Nation a creation of ESPN, Yankees hats are everywhere! Genius!
Andy In Sunny Daytona

Wow, the Packers? Really? Boy, some people sure do love redneck quarterbacks.
I guess the Jets will be next.
- http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/CRsmithT1.jpg tommiesmithjohncarlos a/k/a Mr. Snarky Irrelevant Non Sequitur Jones
  
  That’s the first thing I thought of, too. Favre is a damn icon, he singlehandedly raised the Packers into noticeability. (Although Reggie White raised them to respectability, but that’s another story). Tom Brady won three Superbowls, John Elway won two, but little kids in Brazil, Cameroon, Macedonia and Laos only want to buy green, yellow, and white #4 Favre jerseys. That’s crazy.
  
  Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go pop some Prilosec OTC’s and put on my Wrangler Jeans.
  - Andy In Sunny Daytona
    
    Does Favre have a marketing deal with percocet? AWWW too soon? :)
jsbrendog

haha it’s funny cause during the years from 02-about 05/06 they were the team i hated to love. guys like sheff, randy johnson, womack, wright, pavano, giambi, lofton, quantrill, all these guys came in who i did not want to root for and though they were good players i did not like on my team. I like that i love to love them again.

sidentoe – before anyone is like OHG!11! you are not a true fan just think about the fact that even tho i hated most of the guys on the team i still watched near every game and swooned visibly when MO came into a game lol
- Yank Crank 20
  
  I like to call the 04-06 yankees the Miscellaneous Yankees. Still loved the Yanks and rooted for them like every other Yankee team, but man there were a ton of outside pieces and tons of player turnover in a few short years.
- DonnieBaseballHallofFame
  
  I do not like, and am not a fan of a lot of Yankees players over the years. My list does not mirror yours but it does hold some of the same players. I actually came to respect Randy Johnson a lot more when I saw the guy had NOTHING, and was hurting really badly and still found a way to win what like 17 games or something in back to back seasons with a back injury that would sideline almost anybody from playing let alone pitching when you are the gork that he is.
  
  I would like to get the mullet back on a one year deal if its cost effective. He has more stones than Andy does, and he is not a PED guy.
  
  I never liked A-Rod, Abreu, Lidle, Kevin Brown, Clemens, and a lot of other guys. I rooted for my team and rooted for them to do well while in uniform. Alex is a very good player to great player in a lot of respects but his constant pressing and nickle head bother me. His hustle and grind for a guy with his talent is very respectable in this day and time we live in, but i do not like the guy for a few reasons but not all of them are baseball related. I also wonder if he is a PED guy, when those rumors came up they got brushed under the rug a little bit too fast for my liking.
  
  Andy I was a fan of and rooted for but his whole PED changing of stories and even the move he did last year where he hurried up and signed before some of the news came out was very shady. He used the Yanks and now is hiding behind his agents on the one year deal thing.
  
  I am still a Yankees fan. But I do not drink the KoolAid.
JohnnyC

I don’t think Peter Gammons will be reporting this on ESPN anytime soon.
- Mike Pop
  
  “The Red Sox are the 2nd most popular team in all of baseball, they are the best and most well run organization I have ever seen !!!.. aand cough by the way the yankees are 1st but they are still pathetic”
  - jsbrendog
    
    and theo epstein is jesus
- DonnieBaseballHallofFame
  
  I just read an interview somebody did with Gammons yesterday and he was making a huge deal about the Yanks luxury box deal with the city. Seriously this guy is in the Red Sox pocket and always has been but much more so with this new ownership. I really do not get how he is in the Hall of Fame. I know other writers love the fact that he made it about him and showed them the blueprint to being “somebody” on TV etc, but he is a joke of a little man.
  
  Does anybody think he ever even played t ball? I do not trust a guy who spends his whole live working in sports and never played ball on any level, including sandlot (he has got to be one of two, Lupica might be the other one)
  - http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/CRsmithT1.jpg tommiesmithjohncarlos a/k/a Mr. Snarky Irrelevant Non Sequitur Jones
    
    Does anybody think he ever even played t ball? I do not trust a guy who spends his whole live working in sports and never played ball on any level, including sandlot (he has got to be one of two, Lupica might be the other one)
    
    What is it with your constant degradation of people as being somehow unworthy or unable to speak about baseball if they don’t meet your narrow criterion of acceptability?
    
    You don’t like “pie-chart statheads” because they are nerds and dweebs who look at spreadsheets and don’t really love the game. Now you imply that Gammons and Lupica must not have ever played baseball, mainly because they’re hackneyed writers with an agenda that you disagree with.
    
    I crack on Gammons for being a Red Sox homer, but I respect him as a baseball journalist, because he knows his shit and breaks stories. I don’t care whether or not he played baseball as a kid, because it’s totally immaterial to his effectiveness as a baseball writer.
    - The Honorable Congressman Mondesi
      
      I was waiting to see who wouldn’t be able to resist responding to that stuff. You held out 25 minutes, kudos. lol
      - jsbrendog
        
        yeah i just skip his posts mostly now if they’re longer than a sentence or two
      - http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/CRsmithT1.jpg tommiesmithjohncarlos a/k/a Mr. Snarky Irrelevant Non Sequitur Jones
        
        Just when I thought I was out… he pulls me back in.
        
        http://img355.imageshack.us/img355/4246/3gf1ig6.png
        
        Andy In Sunny Daytona
        
        You missed the whole Don Mattingly / Hall of Fame debate last weekend. Good stuff
        
        http://www.riveraveblues.com Ben K.
        
        Nah. They got in on that action two days later.
    - DonnieBaseballHallofFame
      
      Actually I guess you failed to read the one post I wrote in response to yours yesterday. I good on the whole pie chart stat head thing. I think many people use them as a crutch and not as tools.
      
      I crack on Gammons less for being a homer than I do for him being a guy who has on many occasions made up facts to add sizzle to his “reports”.
      
      “I don’t care whether or not he played baseball as a kid, because it’s totally immaterial to his effectiveness as a baseball writer.”
      
      That is good because I do not care what you care about. I stated my opinion on him was, if that is not your opinion good for you tuff guy.
      
      If you never hit a ball off a tee I do not want to hear what you say about baseball. I do not require one to be a former MVP, but I do require some on the job training and general love of the game.
      - http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/CRsmithT1.jpg tommiesmithjohncarlos a/k/a Mr. Snarky Irrelevant Non Sequitur Jones
        
        I was anticipating a response to this one:
        http://riveraveblues.com/2008/12/nerds-6100/#comment-216523
        
        Haven’t seen that yet.
        
        And as for Gammons and his “lack of hitting a ball off a tee” dilemma, here’s my follow up questions:
        
        A) If playing the game is a prerequisite of being able to speak on it, how much playing in necessary? Does little league suffice? Must it be high-school ball? Minor leagues? Does Gammons opinion matter less if he played baseball back in the 50’s and 60’s when the mound was higher, since it’s a different game? If he played Tee-ball, but didn’t like playing and liked watching and writing about it, does that mean he loves the game more than, less than, or the same as other writers?
        B) Do you research baseball writers before you read them, to make sure they’ve hit a ball off a tee? When you see a column from, say, Jim Caple or Bob Klapisch, do you immediately stop and do a thorough records search to find out whether or not the were ever athletes in their lives before you read the piece? or Or do you just assume that since they’re old and not overly muscled, that they probably never did hit a ball off a tee, they must be nerds, and all baseball writers thus should not have their opinions count.
        C) Does this stance mean you feel that John Kruk and Orestes Destrade’s analysis of the game is better than Rob Neyer’s and Buster Olney’s? Is Rob Dibble smarter and more informative than Tim Kurkjian?
  - jsbrendog
    
    now after reading what all the hub bub was about”
    
    gammons is a very good journalist despite hsi bias and I grew up watching him on espn where he was the face of their baseball coverage and gave it credibility by being the first one to break stories no one else had. you know how he gets to break stories no one else has? because gms, agents, etc respect him (total conjecture but it makes sense)
    
    he is totally HOF for the baseball media material.
    
    Don’t know the last time you went to cooperstown but it’s not just baseball PLAYERS that get in
    - DonnieBaseballHallofFame
      
      It has been well over a decade (maybe closer to two) since the last time I was in Cooperstown. Last time I was there they had different wings. I just do not agree with him being there, but they did not ask me my opinion. There are writers that belong there but I do not think he is one of them. I do not think writers should choose which writers get in, because baseball players (except the old timers committie) do not vote in other ballplayers.
      
      I think there are plenty of people in the hall of fame that do not belong, and a good handful of people that should be and may never get the chance.
      - http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/CRsmithT1.jpg tommiesmithjohncarlos a/k/a Mr. Snarky Irrelevant Non Sequitur Jones
        
        There are writers that belong there but I do not think he is one of them.
        
        Which writers should be there? Name them.
- The Honorable Congressman Mondesi
  
  Yeah he will. Sox fans/media can’t paint the Sox as the “Little Engine That Could” if they don’t paint the Yankees as some crazy, huge, evil force they’re forced to compete against.
  - DonnieBaseballHallofFame
    
    lol that is true
JohnnyC

It’s ironic that Red Sox Nation has never voted to approve funding for a new Fenway Park. Strange isn’t it that “sports’ greatest fan following” repeatedly refuses to spend taxpayer dollars to enrich the team’s ownership yet claims some sort of moral superiority to every other fan base. As for Gammons, I’m sure if there were a 60 year old analogue to him in New York, Hell would freeze over before he’d see the HOF.
- http://www.riveraveblues.com Ben K.
  
  No one in New York ever technically voted for this new stadium either. Don’t be so certain it would have been approved either.
  - JohnnyC
    
    Technically New Yorkers are represented by their City Council. They voted 45 to 2 to approve the issuing of $860 million in tax-free bonds in 2006. The Boston City Council voted down the last proposal for a new Fenway Park in 2001. Technically, Bostonians, some of them Red Sox fans, are represented by their 13 councilpersons. We can debate whether public money should ever be spent on private sports entities but in both cases, the people did speak.
    - http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/CRsmithT1.jpg tommiesmithjohncarlos a/k/a Mr. Snarky Irrelevant Non Sequitur Jones
      
      Maybe John Henry should tell those 13 Boston City Councilpersons that they’d get a plush new luxury suite all to themselves in return for some municipal bond action.
      
      Seriously, though, Donnie has a great point below, the main obstacle against building a new park in Boston is there’s no good place to put it. But Fenway is a dump. They need a new park. It was built almost a hundred years ago, when grown men were 5 feet tall. The seats are cramped, the sightlines suck… Full of history, but not a comfortable place to watch a game.
      - JohnnyC
        
        The last new Fenway was going to be built on adjacent property similar to what’s going on with both Yankee Stadium and Citifield. And, believe me, the neighborhood around the Stadium organized quite a protest effort to stop the current project. It was not the Fenway Action Coalition that defeated the new Fenway plans…it was a city that had just spent billions of dollars on “The Big Dig” and was not in a good place economically after the dot-com bust of the late ’90s.
        
        The Honorable Congressman Mondesi
        
        I wish I had thought of the Big Dig when writing my comment below, that’s an excellent point.
      - The Honorable Congressman Mondesi
        
        I agree that it’s perfectly reasonable to think the Sox haven’t built a new park due to the trouble of finding a new location for a park in Boston, since that’s what the Sox have always said about that issue and there’s not much reason to doubt their sincerity, but I think there’s definitely some room to question that line of reasoning. The obstacles, in my mind, location-wise, would be (1) simply finding land that’s available in Boston (since I’m sure moving outside the city limits wouldn’t be met with much support) and (2) figuring out a way to either get that land in the Sox’ hands or allow them to use it for a new stadium. As to point (1), it’s clearly not an easy proposition in Boston, but it was a proposition they didn’t find impossible when they wanted to build a replacement for the old Boston Garden. Let’s not forget, Boston Garden was an historic sporting venue, like Fenway is. And Boston is certainly not as dense a place as a city like NY, and it’s not like we can’t find space for new sporting venues here (Yankee Stadium, CitiField, proposed site for new MSG/Penn Station, proposed West Side Stadium for Olympics/Jets, various proposed sites for Yankees in Manhattan, and proposed Barclays Arena at Atlantic Yards in Brooklyn). That last proposed site, the proposed Barclays Arena at Atlantic Yards in Brooklyn, leads to my thoughts on point (2) above: If the team and city were serious about finding a new space for a stadium, they have some very serious tools at their disposal to make that happen. I mean, the Supreme Court says municipalities can condemn land for shopping centers/private industry because that purpose serves a public good, but there’s going to be some problem with condemning “blighted” land for a new Fenway? I think if they really, truly wanted to build a new stadium, they could find a suitable location. I think it’s entirely possible that the more important reasons here are that the Sox don’t feel the need to leave Fenway yet, and/or don’t believe they can line up the financing (for whatever reason).
        
        (You, and DBHOF below, make a perfectly reasonable argument that it’s a location issue, just presenting another side to it. Sorry this response is so long.)
- DonnieBaseballHallofFame
  
  “As for Gammons, I’m sure if there were a 60 year old analogue to him in New York, Hell would freeze over before he’d see the HOF.”
  
  One would not be tolerated that if for sure.
  
  I think the real reason there is no new Fenway is because there is nowhere to build it. Just all the historic laws of building things there is a nightmare.
  
  I know there were tons of issues to getting the land in the Bronx but the Bronx is not Manhattan or even Boston proper.
  - radnom
    
    Yeah I was just going to say…where the hell do you think they would build the new Fenway?
    The old one had to be crammed into one block as it is (hence the green monster).
    
    I read that they though about a new stadium 5-10 years ago, but instead expanded the seating and worked on marketing the stadium. I think the’ve done such a good job on that front that they couldn’t replace Fenway in the near future if they wanted to.
  - JohnnyC
    
    It was about the money. John Harrington, before he sold the team, acknowledged that the biggest obstacle to a new Fenway was getting the financing…even in 1999 estimated to exceed $545 million. The current ownership is not willing to fund in any substantial way a new stadium. So, they’ll continue to build their vertiable Towers of Babel on either side of the existing structure. God help the first Red Sox fan who falls out of these nose-bleed seats.
    - DonnieBaseballHallofFame
      
      Well the lack of land is one of the reasons the cost would be so high. If i built a lemonade stand in Quincy, Mass it would cost me nothing but if I built the same lemonade stand smack in the middle of Boston it would cost me twenty times as much.
      
      Now make it a baseball park with all the modern accessories and oh yeah parking OH BOY ITD BE NICE TO GET SOME PARKING (Fenway now currently has a huge abundance of it :)
      
      I think that is one of the main reasons the funding was not there.
  - jsbrendog
    
    they could be the jets/giants of baseball and put it somewhere else but just cal themselves the boston red sox. I think the fan outcry from something like that would make me so giddy iwth jubilation my head my explode
    - http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/CRsmithT1.jpg tommiesmithjohncarlos a/k/a Mr. Snarky Irrelevant Non Sequitur Jones
      
      Like how the Patriots are in Foxborough, which is much, much farther from Boston than the Meadowlands are from NYC, yet Jets and Giants fans are constantly teased about their teams not being “New York” teams but merely “New Jersey” teams?
      
      There’s a double standard…
    - DonnieBaseballHallofFame
      
      I do not see that working there for a lot of reasons. One of which is all the walk up college kid / college kid type traffic they get. Maybe it could work but it would change the whole total feel and I think it might effect their fanbase.
      - Rick in Boston
        
        That walkup crowd doesn’t really exist – they’ve priced out a huge part of their fan base. The lines are longer at the bars nearby then at the ballpark.
        
        There’s a bigger issue, though, and that’s the fact that there is nowhere to build within the city of Boston, unless they go on the outskirts and end up striking a deal with Harvard to take on some of the land that the university purchased in Allston (a section of the city analogous to parts of Queens & Brooklyn).
DonnieBaseballHallofFame

“With an index of 400.76, the Yankees had three times as many out-of-market fans as the average team.”

I do not believe that ratio to be correct. No way the Yankees ONLY have 3 times the out of market fans as the average team. I would be willing to bet the Yanks, Cubs, Red Sox, Mets all have way more than 3 times the out of market fans than the average team. Just off of the number of people who live or have lived or have family who live or lived in these markets and are now out of market.
- radnom
  
  I think you are arguing the ambigious definition on the word “average”.
  
  I would imagine that you are correct if it is refering to “median”, that is a random middle of the road popularity team. The Yankees certainly have more than 3 times the number of out of market fans of them.
  
  I beleive the article means it as the “mean” though, so when considering the average you must realise that the Cubs, Red Sox, Mets (Dodgers, Giants, Patriots…..etc) are all included in this calculation. Thinking about it this way the ratio seems fine to me.
  - DonnieBaseballHallofFame
    
    You are correct in which definition of the word “average” I was talking about. Thanks for pointing that out.