I cannot vouch for how accurate this is, but it is interesting. Sucks to be the Mets and Athletics apparently. And Alaska is big on the Red Sox and Mariners and Hawaii on San Francisco's Giants. Who knew? 

Until expansion creates the Honolulu Hula Hoops and the Anchorage Anchors I guess. And Canada is Blue Jays country (literally country) until the Ottawa Otters and Vancouver Vanguards take the field. 



http://uk.businessinsider.com/facebook-baseball-teams-map-2015-4?r=US



And when is Austin, a wonderful city and the largest in the US without a major sports team - going to have the Bluebonnets play baseball in the majors (if you have been to Texas in the Spring you know why I would come up with that name) so that the Astros will be less depressed, if not more expansive in their market. 

As an Austin resident, I'd go watch the Bluebonnets play, though it would be hard to imagine Texas supporting a third baseball team.

I think Texas could handle 3 teams when California has 5, and NY and Florida, which are now in 3rd and 4th place in terms of population, have 2 each as do Ohio, Illinois,  Missouri and Pennsylvania. 

Put the team in between San Antonio and Austin (New Braunfels or San Marcos would work) and then you'd have a much larger market and would get support from both cities. I love my San Antonio Missions, but could renounce my Rangers fandom to get behind the Bluebonnets!

If you really wanted a team, you would build a stadium and grab the A's.

They'll take just about anything...

Given the Texas' expansive size and distances between major cities, I don't think there would be much, if any, problem in supporting a third team located in Austin. Maybe the A's can finally get out of purgatory and move there!

A few other things that interested me about the map.

surprised north/northwest Ohio favors the Tigers over the Indians, as the Tribe isn't that far from Toledo. Given the state of animosity between Michigan and Oho in general, I would have thought anything associated with a MI zip code would be sneered at in the Oil Pan of OH.

would have thought New Mexico would be Diamondback country as they're sort of AZ east

Utah needs to come to grips with the fact they're in the Western US and get off the presumably ESPN driven Bosox/Yankee fan train. Good grief. At least like the Rockies people. What does Utah have in common with Boston?

Ditto Virginia and NC... how about rooting for the Nats or Orioles? You'd think that a state where the capital of the confederacy was located would loathe anything associated with the word "Yankees", but maybe they're over the Civil War now.

I knew FLA had many transplanted New Yawkers, but you do have some local teams now folks. Root for them.

It would be interesting to see this study done over a long period of time and watch how it changes as teams have good stretches and bad stretches. For instance, if the Astros were to take over as the better team in Texas for a stretch (seems quite possible), will they take a larger portion of the state away from the Rangers? How many diehard versus fair-weather fans are there?

What US city that doesn't currently have a MLB team should be next in line in case a team wishes to move. I'm not sure if any current teams are struggling in attendance right now or not.

Posted by cwillis802 on 5/29/2015 9:04:00 PM (view original):
What US city that doesn't currently have a MLB team should be next in line in case a team wishes to move. I'm not sure if any current teams are struggling in attendance right now or not.

Portland, Oregon.  I live two hours south of there.  Portland has great support behind the Blazers and would probably do well with a baseball team.  It would just need to be an NL team so that there is no conflict with my Mariners.

maybe have teams play regular season games in different cities and countries.  Say in April when attendance is usually low any way.  Have the Bluejays play in Buffalo,
Seattle in portland (is there a stadium) The Marlins in Cuba, the Twins in one of the Dakota's etc...

Area51man makes a good case for Portland, and I like mlent's original idea. 

But I think the South is actually the most under-represented area. I would say that Mobile, Alabama - birth place of Henry Aaron, and if I am not wrong also Satchel Paige, but of many other stars in baseball history merits a look - the deep south has only Atlanta to root for. 

But Kentucky and Tennessee might make a case - in fact that whole general region including Appalachia are not represented in MLB.

Memphis would be on good idea, challenging the Cardinals for hegemony on the Mississippi, and the team could be called the Suns in honor of Sun Records, arguably the most influential cultural institution of any kind in the whole 20th Century (and thank God for it !).

Or maybe their musical rivals the Nashville Opreys. But Louisville, Kentucky's role in baseball history should be worth a shot at a team as well, and Durham also should get a shot at a team. 

Speaking of river teams, take a look at this:


http://www.milb.com/news/article.jsp?ymd=20150528&content_id=127012092&fext=.jsp&vkey=news_milb&sid=milb

Some big cities in Texas that don't have teams. San Antonio. El Paso. You need a pretty hefty population to support a team I think. I wonder if Montreal would be ready for a team again.

Posted by cwillis802 on 5/30/2015 9:54:00 PM (view original):
Some big cities in Texas that don't have teams. San Antonio. El Paso. You need a pretty hefty population to support a team I think. I wonder if Montreal would be ready for a team again.

This I guess is the problem for the Great Plains. An area bigger than Europe is covered by the Kansas City Royals and maybe the Twins if you want to count them. But what Great Plains city can support a team? Omaha? Topeka? Wichita? You can have a team cover a state, but the distances to get to the stadium are pretty vast. 

By the way the largest city in the US without a major sports team of any kind is lovely Austin, Texas, a city I like very much, though it is a fraction of the size of San Antonio. On the other hand, they are almost close enough to be sister cities, so maybe an Austin-San Antonio team could make it. 

ON THE OTHER HAND:  I have the impression that TV revenues are increasingly as important as gate receipts (and indeed had baseball figured this out back in the 1950s the Dodgers could have stayed in Brooklyn), and so perhaps population, distance, etc. may not matter that much.

Plus there is revenue sharing, though at a certain point New Yorkers will complain about subsidizing the whole rest of the country's baseball fix. 

'course we already do that for everything else in the country:

http://www.economist.com/blogs/dailychart/2011/08/americas-fiscal-union

http://www.businessinsider.com/red-states-are-welfare-queens-2011-8?IR=T#!IpqnG

http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2014/05/which-states-are-givers-and-which-are-takers/361668/