Urban Sports: San Diego

[DemocraticNole]

San Diego is a great city. A friend of mine lives there, this being his second time to do so. The first time he lived there, he did so without owning a car, but was able to get around very easily because of the trolley system. He lived in El Cajon and worked for the Chargers up at the Q, and he said it was always easy to get around. There aren't too many places you can live comfortably without owning a vehicle and I'm not sure we could say Jacksonville will ever be one of those.

With regards to a pro baseball team, this will likely never happen without significant population growth. Baseball is the toughest sport for a small market to support for various reasons. First reason is that there are 81 home games, many during the week during the day, that are difficult for people to attend. The other is the fact that MLB has no salary cap and revenue sharing like the NFL and NBA does. This is why teams like NY Yankees, Boston, LA Dodgers, SF Giants field better teams, because they can always pay the most money. The two smallest markets in the MLB are Kansas City (1.83 million) and Cincinatti (2.1 million). These two places have had teams for many years and were much more prevalent in years past. Of your new expansion cities (teams since 1993), Denver is the smallest at 2.4 million, followed by Tampa at 2.7 million, then Phoenix at 4 million, and Miami/So. FLA at 5.46 million. We all know that the Devil Rays receive little support in Tampa, but the Rockies do well in Denver. This is do to the fact that Denver is clearly the biggest economic center of the region. The Rockies have zero competition in a multi-state area, so their games are shown in places like Wyoming, Idaho, Montana, and Utah. By contrast, the Devil Rays must compete with the Marlins and the Braves, not to mention the millions of transplants to the area who maintain allegiance to their original teams.

If Jacksonville were to attempt to acquire another professional team, it would clearly need to be the NBA. The smallest NBA market is Memphis at 1.27 million (smaller than Jax), followed by Charlotte at 1.58 million, and Indianapolis at 1.66 million. Again though, these markets have the advantage of having a substanial area outside of their metro to draw fans. Jacksonville does not have this option. San Antonio is the closest example to what Jax can do and they have a metro population of 1.9 million.

As far as what Jacksonville can do with what they have, they already have a leg up with Municipal Stadium and Veterans Arena downtown, with easy freeway access. The city should be trying to encourage development of bars and shopping right next to the stadium. This would have people in the area regardless of whether or not there is a game going on and would create a great gameday atmosphere as well.