Size comparison of metropolitan areas with at least one major league team

[Big McLargehuge]

Eh... I disagree with that Pittsburgh number. What are they defining as a "metropolitan area"?

I've never seen a metro population of Pittsburgh listed outside of the 2.3-2.6 million range in my lifetime, so it seems accurate to me.

Pittsburgh's city population is only so relatively tiny because it's one of the smallest 'big' cities by land area (58.34 sq. miles, to say nothing of topography). To compare cities randomly: Columbus covers ~3.7x as much land, San Jose ~3.1x, Tampa ~3x, Denver ~2.5x, Dallas ~6x, Raleigh ~2.5x, even Las Vegas is ~2.3x larger, and to bring the NFL's saddest joke into it: Jacksonville covers ~15x as much land as Pittsburgh. Despite growing up just a couple minutes from downtown, Pittsburgh's population didn't change when I moved out...the metro area lost me, but despite being a tunnel away from downtown I haven't had a Pittsburgh address since I was a baby and my parents moved one suburb over. I'd say counting the counties surrounding the city is a more than fair metric, and by adding up the counties surrounding Pittsburgh you get Pittsburgh's estimated metro area so I think it's safe to say that's the metric used. I'd argue that you could include a couple other places here with little argument from anyone, but none of them move the population needle all that much (~2.6m vs. ~2.3m).

County	Population (2018 est.)
Allegheny	1,218,452
Armstrong	65,263
Beaver	164,742
Butler	187,888
Fayette	130,441
Washington	207,246
Westmoreland	350,611
Total	2,324,643

[TBODY] [/TBODY]

Buffalo (52.5) and St. Louis (61.9) are in a similar boat off the top of my head (numbers double-checked). To add a kicker, Anaheim is in the same group (50.9) size-wise and was little more than orange groves prior to Knott's Berry Farm & Disneyland opening, meaning it didn't have a century of annexing neighbors like older cities do (even Pittsburgh annexed the old Allegheny, aka the North Shore directly across from downtown where the Pirates & Steelers play).

The 'every county around a city's county' as an easy qualifier for metro size falls apart once you start going west and counties start becoming the size of east coast states. Las Vegas's Clark County is roughly the size of New Jersey itself. I only have a stat from 2000 for this point, but apparently the Pittsburgh MSA covers the 55th largest area in the country, putting it 12th of 21 American NHL markets (including Seattle). Surprisingly St. Louis is 2nd on the list by that metric. Buffalo is dead last by a large margin, thanks to its location on a lake next to an international border and two state borders, with Hartford being the only easily recognizable city near it. Unsurprisingly the Coyotes nearly lap the league in this one metric.


Yes, I am procrastinating. Why do you ask?

 

[Randy Butternubs]

I just thought that Pittsburgh was smaller than the 2.4m listed. Which is why I was curious as to what the "metro area" was. I don't consider Fayette county a metro area, but I'm no expert. Same with Armstrong, but to a lesser degree. Even then, that only drops the number 0.2m so it isn't that big a deal.

 

[Negan4Coach]

for raleigh, they should really be using the raleigh-durham-chapel hill CSA which was ~2m a few years ago. the arena is on the far west side of raleigh basically in the center of the other three cities.

I mean I don't feel like the arena is "basically in the center" of Chapel Hill. That place is a long drive from here.

Not even Durham. I don't see those 3 cities as being anymore the same as I see Seattle and Tacoma being the same city. We just share an airport.

 

[tarheelhockey]

I mean I don't feel like the arena is "basically in the center" of Chapel Hill. That place is a long drive from here.

Not even Durham. I don't see those 3 cities as being anymore the same as I see Seattle and Tacoma being the same city. We just share an airport.

In terms of driving distance:
PNC Arena to Chapel Hill = 28 miles, 44 minutes if you left right now
PNC Arena to Knightdale = 19 miles, 25 minutes if you left right now

In terms of population:
East of the Arena (Raleigh + Garner + Knightdale + Wake Forest + Johnson Cty) = 775,000
West of the Arena (Durham Cty + Orange Cty + Chatham Cty + Cary + Apex + Morrisville + Fuquay + Holly Springs) = 834,000

I think this list is a fair representation of the boundaries PNC's local audience, with the caveat that I'm obviously missing e.g. Franklin County which are part of the MSA, and counting some distant rural corners of neighbor counties. IMO the difference is pretty negligible.

Conclusion: The arena is a bit east-of-center according to driving distances, but pretty well centered in terms of population distribution.

 

[Daximus]

No one is rich enough in Toronto though to do it. Tanenbaum already couldnt afford it 5 years ago and the NFL openly said their cheap bid was bad. The price has only likely gone up since then.

It still comes down to why the NFL would need Toronto.

They really don't NEED them per say. But they are definitely a good fall back option. They would need to build a brand new stadium and in doing so the Argonauts would likely have to move or fold.

I'm pretty sure that the NFL is already the 2nd most watched sport in Canada. There is likely a pretty large untapped market of either casual football fans or people who aren't fully into the NFL due to having no team they really root for that would likely watch more if they had a national team. I could see a Toronto NFL team doing exceptionally well. Not top of the league but likely good enough to hover right in the middle or better.

 

[BKIslandersFan]

They really don't NEED them per say. But they are definitely a good fall back option. They would need to build a brand new stadium and in doing so the Argonauts would likely have to move or fold.

I'm pretty sure that the NFL is already the 2nd most watched sport in Canada. There is likely a pretty large untapped market of either casual football fans or people who aren't fully into the NFL due to having no team they really root for that would likely watch more if they had a national team. I could see a Toronto NFL team doing exceptionally well. Not top of the league but likely good enough to hover right in the middle or better.

I don’t see why Argonauts would have to move. If Seattle can support both Hawks and Dragons, why not a Toronto?

 

[Daximus]

I don’t see why Argonauts would have to move. If Seattle can support both Hawks and Dragons, why not a Toronto?

The argonauts already average the lowest attendence in the entire CFL. If an NFL team came to Toronto there is no way that the team would be able to maintain anywhere close to the shockingly low attendence they do right now.

They averaged less fans last season then the Coyotes are currently averaging this season to put it into perspective