Numbers say these are the most (and least) successful sports cities since 2000
Has Boston or LA had the best pro sports run of the 21st Century so far? It depends on how you count.
Welcome back to Club Sportico, where we break down the intersection of sports and money—with an extra bit of humor and opinion. Today, “data wiz” Lev tells you whether to be happy or upset about your city’s performance in sports so far this century…
When I volunteered to rank the most successful pro sports cities of the past 25 years, it did not immediately dawn upon me that I, as a New York sports fan, essentially signed up to celebrate my city’s arch nemesis in Boston while reminding myself of two-plus decades of misery. Nonetheless, thanks to Jacob and Eben for letting me have a go at my first Club Sportico post.
Methodology
Actually, first… Minnesotans, you may want to stop reading. I’ll give you a shout-out for inventing Scotch tape and your impressive voter turnout (a top-two state in each of the past 13 presidential elections!) while you see yourselves out.
Now for the nuts and bolts of the calculations 🧮. I wanted to measure success in the major sports beyond titles alone—something that assesses general fan satisfaction over the past quarter of a century. The Knicks won a playoff round last year; that shouldn’t count for nothing!
I also needed a metric that could be equally weighted across the sports. Winning percentage and playoff series wins were tricky due to different lengths of regular seasons and playoffs between the leagues.
I settled on total playoff round appearances starting with the quarterfinals (the earliest playoff round in which all leagues include the same number of teams: eight) in the four major sports leagues. This scoring system posits that an MLB fanbase gets the same joy from making the LDS as an NBA fan base gets from winning one playoff round, for example. I think that’s about right.
There is some smaller league erasure happening here, but I almost exclusively hang out with sports fans, and I think most of them could get to the 10th digit of pi before recalling the 2024 MLS champion. NWSL and WNBA are growing but still reach significantly fewer people than the big four.
Defining cities was difficult, but I generally went with larger media markets to encompass fans with similar rooting interests. As an extreme example, I even grouped Charlotte and Raleigh together under “Carolina.” The one exception was splitting out New Jersey from New York (despite Newark being a part of the New York metropolitan area), which felt necessary due to the extent to which New Yorkers shit on New Jersey (plus New York already has two hockey teams!)
Results
The clear top two are Los Angeles (with the help of Anaheim) and Boston, which have 120 and 116 playoff round advancements, respectively. They also each have exactly 13 championships over the analyzed time period. You’d never know it the way both fan bases love to complain.
LA may have the slight edge in raw numbers, but there’s no doubt Boston’s totals are more impressive given that it only has one team in each league versus two each for LA. Granted, the Clippers and Chargers aren’t helping much, but the Anaheim boost is real, with the Angels and Ducks each chipping in double digit playoff series (the Ducks won the Stanley Cup even after they were no longer “Mighty”).
In a distant third, with seven titles and 95 quarterfinal-or-later playoff round appearances, is the Bay Area, powered by the Warriors’ dynasty.
Props to the two cities in the top 10 that don’t have all four major sports at their disposal: Tampa Bay and especially St. Louis, which now only has two franchises after the Rams’ departure. By our scoring system, the Cardinals have been the third most successful team in baseball after the Yankees and Dodgers this millennium.
The crown of doing the most with the least has to belong to San Antonio, whose 32 playoff series wins and four championships thanks to the Spurs alone are results on par with legitimate sports hubs such as Atlanta, Houston and Phoenix. Somehow, even after all those victory parades with No. 1 overall pick Tim Duncan, the Spurs never considered tanking again to land another generational big man. “It’s not who I am,” coach Gregg Popovich said back in 2022.
Now for the bad
Our nation’s capital has the fewest playoff round advancements (24) of any city with teams in all four leagues—fewer than New Jersey (26), which has had just a hockey team since 2012. The only thing going for Washington D.C. is that it has two titles.
The Minneapolis-St. Paul market (26), however, is the only metropolitan area with teams in all four major sports that hasn’t won a single championship this millennium. There isn’t even a city with three major sports teams that hasn’t won a title since 2000. It gets even worse; Minnesota hasn’t played in a single championship game or series!
The Timberwolves and Wild have each won a playoff series in only two of the 25 years in question. The Twins made a lone ALCS back in 2002 and got the gentleman’s sweep. The Vikings came the closest, with the team nearly in range to kick a field goal versus the Saints to make Super Bowl XLIV when Brett Favre threw across his body for an interception (in case Vikings fans needed a reminder). They played in two other NFC Championships this century, which they lost by a combined score of 79-7.
Here’s where the omitted leagues would drastically change the results, as the Minnesota Lynx have been one of the W’s winningest teams, claiming four titles. Glen Taylor can’t run a winning men’s basketball team but he sure can run a dominant women’s basketball team.
The entire exercise may have less meaning than it would have in the 20th Century now that young fans’ allegiances are more tied to athletes than geography. For example, if a bandwagoner simply rooted for LeBron and Tom Brady over the past quarter of a century, their teams would have racked up 85 playoff round advancements and 11 titles, a better scorecard than all but the top two cities.
No wonder Gen Z is following athletes around instead of accepting their fates. It’s a lot more fun that way! The good thing is, you can find happiness in life without successful sports teams—Minnesota was ranked the sixth happiest U.S. state in WalletHub’s annual report.
Hawaii placed No. 1 in that study. Maybe the real key to happiness is to have no sports teams at all. 🏝️
Programming Note: The Pick Six now comes in a separate post, in paying members’ inboxes every Saturday AM.
Club Sportico is a community organized by Sportico, a digital media company launched in 2020 to cover the business side of sports. You can read breaking news, smart analysis, and in-depth features from Eben, Jacob and their colleagues at Sportico.com, and listen to the Sporticast podcast wherever you get your audio. Contact us at club@sportico.com.