I mean how many people forget Nashville is Central Time? Was the comment clarified? Nashville still has good hopes of getting a team if there’s a real push.
I’m not aware that it was ever clarified, but, yeah, Nashville remains among the most attractive candidates for an expansion team, Central Time Zone or no. I’m sure Manfred knows where Nashville is, but losing track of it in an answer at a press conference would be totally on-brand for him.
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Could just be semantics and I am obviously biased, but I would say that while yes, Nashville is among the most obvious locations, it is not the most attractive location. For the reasons we like to talk about in this thread.
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I agree with you. I wasn’t actually trying to argue with you, and I apologize if it read that way. I was just trying to add my own thoughts.
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I’m sorry. I misunderstood. My apologies.
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why 60 miles? Feels like 30 miles is more determinative. People arent driving 55 miles for mid week games which will where the rubber hits the road on whether we can consistently fill a stadium or not.
You can look at media market lists and get similar results. Raleigh-Durham is larger than St. Louis, Pittsburgh, Baltimore, San Diego, Cincinnati, Kansas City, and Milwaukee. But also Nashville, Portland, and Salt Lake. And the gap will likely only grow over the decades.
Did a cursory look at the 30-mile (48-km) circle. Raleigh is behind St Louis, but ahead of Milwaukee, Nashville, Salt Lake, Kansas City, Pittsburgh, and Cincinnati.
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I looked at that radius tool and is that right, in a 60-ish mile radius (100 km) more people live around Raleigh than Charlotte?
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Probably. Charlotte is fairly isolated. We have Fayetteville.
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Radius is measured around the Capitol for Raleigh and the intersection of Trade & Tryon for Charlotte.
But here’s the real shocker using the
100km radius!
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Hey Lou & Everybody! Would you Lou & your team & everyone consider supporting bringing The Atlantic League Professional Baseball coming to Zebulon Stadium thru their survey? If you Google, Zebulon Mudcats Stadium Survey by February 28th, to support a team coming to Zebulon. ALPB is 25 years old, AA level, 40% of the league’s players have MLB playing time. Thanks for any help on this.
The reason why MLB to Raleigh always, always uses what it alleges is a 60-mile radius when you never see anyone else in any context whatsoever use a 60-mile radius to determine the size of a market is that a “60-mile” radius just, just barely gets you most of Greensboro and also scoops up Fayetteville and Rocky Mount. I mean, you can look right on the graphic MLB to Raleigh generated and see the line running right through Greensboro.
And, in fact, even though MLB to Raleigh says it’s a 60-mile radius, it’s actually 62.1 because the tool they’re using uses kilometers instead of miles. And I’m also not sure what point they’re using as the center of the circle, but I used the old Capitol as the center and got almost the exact same number that @John did (I got nine fewer people), which is 115,000 fewer people than MLB Raleigh gets. They must have strategically chosen a point slightly to the north and the west, because if you compare their circle to John’s, lo and behold, they pick up a lot more of Greensboro than his does, and that’s why the numbers are so different. You can look right at the radius of the two circles and see the difference. You can also see from John’s circle for Charlotte that 62.1 miles from there just barely misses High Point and Winston-Salem, which would bring up Charlotte’s population total substantially.
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You’re not wrong, but being selective with your data to tell the story you want is no bad thing in marketing.
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Yeah, if you pick a point closer to the population center of the Triangle, you are going to pick up more people in the tool. This is from the 40/540 interchange.
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I feel that for big league sports, a rather large radius is appropriate. An hour, hour and a half is No Big Deal for that sort of thing.
I know folks who live down by the coast and yet have season tickets to the Hurricanes.
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I used to live in Birmingham and a lot of people I knew would drive over 2 hours and 140 miles to Atlanta to watch the Braves at least once a year. I agree a bigger circle is absolutely warranted here, especially when there’s no other nearby teams (outside of DC).
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Growing up in Asheville, my family would go to lots of Asheville Tourists games but we also made the three-plus hour trek to Atlanta about once a year to see the Braves. (Yes, Asheville is closer to Atlanta than it is to Raleigh.)
Now with a family of my own, we have been to Charlotte from here to watch the Hornets and Panthers, and we’ve gone for a USMNT soccer match too. Making plans to see Messi and Inter Miami play Charlotte FC in September.
These sort of things really are a draw from quite a distance. A bit over an hour drive in from Greensboro would be nothing. Utterly inconsequential. 60 mile radius makes plenty of sense.
Though the Bulls do put on a good show, it’s just not the same as the Major League. I miss MLB and would love to take my kids… but Atlanta and Washington are just too far to make it worthwhile.
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Yep - shoot it can take Mets fans coming in from New Jersey 2+ hours to get to Citi Field. They still do it.
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When we were trying to figure out a way to show population density in the context of filling a stadium, we were wondering how far out to look. At the time this data was collected we were working alongside Mitchell Zeits who is the sports consultant who hepled close the deals on Camden Yards, the new Titans stadium and many many more. He advised us to focus on those living up within a 60 mile drive of the stadium.
The Tom Forth radius tool was the most accessible and easy way to calculate that. So we used that tool, and yes it is 62.1 miles, but it’s an even 100 KM which is the max that tool goes to.
As for where the pin is placed, we placed it on every stadium in cities that have teams, and for us and expansion hopefuls, we placed it in a spot that was publically most talked about for potential stadium placement.
For us, that was around the Lenovo Center development. There is no guarentee that if you get a team that it all works out and they aquire land around that, but we used it because Gov. Cooper, Troxler, and Scott Dupree have all publically made comments about that location.
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