Tuesday, July 24, 2007

It's Just a Popularity Contest

Well, in this case it is at least:


The Washington Nationals are the country's least favorite baseball team, a Harris Poll has found. Only the Toronto Blue Jays fell behind the Nationals in a online survey of 2,372 U.S. residents between June 5 and June 11 . . .The Orioles snatched the 13th spot in the survey. The New York Yankees topped the list with the most number of fans for the fifth year in a row. The Atlanta Braves were the second favorite team, followed by the Boston Red Sox at No. 3.

Hard to say exactly what this is measuring without the questions being made available, but it appears as though they just asked folks what their favorite team was. Color me surprised that the Braves placed ahead the BoSox, especially since the TBS exposure has been reduced to almost nothing in recent years.


Here's something that I generally knew but still found amazing to see in print:

That ranking is in line with the D.C. baseball team's attendance. So far this year, 1.24 million fans have come to Nationals games, which works out to 23,397 per game, less than half of the 52,049 fans per game the New York Yankees attracted.
That 1.24 million figure is used to illustrate the haplessness of the Nats, but it's good to remember that it wasn't that damn long ago when teams with lower attendance wouldn't sniff 1.24 million in a whole season.

2 comments:

Chimpanzee Rage said...

Does this make sense? Braves are more popular than the BoSox even though their TBS exposure has been lower this year? Where is the link to this harris poll, how do we even know what this data really says. You're a lawyer, cite it! Also, the nats haplessness should be considered not against the Yankees, which many teams would be hapless against, but against their former selves the Expos whom attracted around 8,000 people a game. The Nats are building a fan base and dont have the luxury of history to sell the team. This is about the most pointless article I've read. No wonder you're stuck practicing law in Columbus.

Craig Calcaterra said...

Hey man, I link you decide.