Florida's market size underrated?
Posted: Sat Jun 5, 2010 9:26 pm
I hear it all the time when talking about how Lebron James wants a big market so Miami is out but I think it is BS.
Sure we do not have any mega cities like Boston, NYC, LA, Chicago but we have the 4th largest state in the country with a population of 19 million people.
A lot of people from the North East have the wrong perspective about Florida. Up there in the NE there are tons of big cities and hence NBA franchises all very close to each other. So say when you leave Boston and Massachusetts you quickly will enter another NBA team's territory.
Because of this being very common in the NE most people have the idea that only the city the team is located in is the market for that team. This is true in the NE and in states where basically one big city makes up the states population (like Chicago) but it is completely false in Florida where the population is spread out but there are only 2 teams in the state.
Basically what I am saying is that the radius that makes up the market for Miami and Orlando is much larger than the radius that makes up the market for the Knicks (which is mainly just NYC) and the Celtics etc.
I mean do they just expect that Tampa, Naples and south west Florida, Jacksonville, the panhandle and all of the other Florida cities that have no NBA teams and are located away from the Miami and Orlando Metro areas do not follow the NBA?
If Miami were to establish a dynasty (which would happen if Lebron came here) pretty much the entire state except for Orlando would follow the Heat and watch them closely- That's a lot of people.
Sure we do not have any mega cities like Boston, NYC, LA, Chicago but we have the 4th largest state in the country with a population of 19 million people.
A lot of people from the North East have the wrong perspective about Florida. Up there in the NE there are tons of big cities and hence NBA franchises all very close to each other. So say when you leave Boston and Massachusetts you quickly will enter another NBA team's territory.
Because of this being very common in the NE most people have the idea that only the city the team is located in is the market for that team. This is true in the NE and in states where basically one big city makes up the states population (like Chicago) but it is completely false in Florida where the population is spread out but there are only 2 teams in the state.
Basically what I am saying is that the radius that makes up the market for Miami and Orlando is much larger than the radius that makes up the market for the Knicks (which is mainly just NYC) and the Celtics etc.
I mean do they just expect that Tampa, Naples and south west Florida, Jacksonville, the panhandle and all of the other Florida cities that have no NBA teams and are located away from the Miami and Orlando Metro areas do not follow the NBA?
If Miami were to establish a dynasty (which would happen if Lebron came here) pretty much the entire state except for Orlando would follow the Heat and watch them closely- That's a lot of people.
