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> Plenty of high prestige world cities like Tokyo or London or Paris aren't known for their pro sports teams. Not that I disagree with the general gist, I had

> Plenty of high prestige world cities like Tokyo or London or Paris aren't known for their pro sports teams. Not that I disagree with the general gist, I had to facepalm at that! I think the general risk is that a rival politician will promise to bring back sports teams, with some dodgy financial setup that conceals the true cost, and the electorate will gobble it up

TulliusCicero 5y ago
Why? Tons of friends and family of mine have visited those cities, I've never heard of any of them doing it to see their sports teams.
- yywwbbn 5y ago
  I’m sure that globally London and probably Paris (probably a bit more debatable) are much better know for their professional sports teams than any city in the US.
  - TulliusCicero 5y ago
    No London team even breaks the top 10 of most valuable sports team, but there are several US entries there, so that seems unlikely: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forbes%27_list_of_the_most_valuable_sports_teams https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forbes%27_list_of_the_most_val... I tried googling more directly for global popularity/famousness, but couldn't find any hard data. And of course there's the issue of "has well known sports teams" vs "well known for their sports team". The former you could probably get data on somewhere, but the latter, I doubt it.
    - Symbiote 5y ago
      Money isn't everything, and it's relative. Travel outside the USA and every kid you meet has heard of Chelsea, Arsenal and Tottenham. If I were French or Spanish rather than British, these kids would say PSG or Real Madrid instead. The fans don't have as much money as Americans, but there are 10-15x as many followers on Facebook. But I would argue England is well known for its sports teams rather than London. (There's also Manchester, Liverpool etc.)
      - TulliusCicero 5y ago
        > Travel outside the USA and every kid you meet has heard of Chelsea, Arsenal and Tottenham. If I were French or Spanish rather than British, these kids would say PSG or Real Madrid instead. I think what you mean by "travel outside the USA" might be "travel in Europe". I'd bet that you'd get more recognition of the Lakers in, say, China than any of those Premier League teams. > But I would argue England is well known for its sports teams rather than London. (There's also Manchester, Liverpool etc.) That's fair, those two cities are probably known for their football teams moreso than anything else.
        srhngpr 5y ago
        >I think what you mean by "travel outside the USA" might be "travel in Europe". I'd bet that you'd get more recognition of the Lakers in, say, China than any of those Premier League teams. Hard disagree on this one. It is in fact "outside the USA" because globally (not just in Europe), English Premier League teams like Manchester United, Liverpool, Chelsea, Arsenal, Tottenham, etc. are extremely popular, especially in China.
        goosedragons 5y ago
        Nobody cares in Canada either. So "outside the USA" is wrong.
        TulliusCicero 5y ago
        https://www.sportspromedia.com/news/nba-china-most-popular-sports-league-premier-league-champions-league-curry/ https://www.sportspromedia.com/news/nba-china-most-popular-s... > The National Basketball Association (NBA) has been named the most popular sports league in China in a recent survey undertaken by Ampere Analysis. > Soccer’s English Premier League and Uefa Champions League ranked second and third respectively, in the report that conducted research with Chinese internet users. So, the EPL is indeed popular there...but not as popular as the NBA.
        bprieto 5y ago
    - HunOL 5y ago
      >I tried googling more directly for global popularity/famousness, but couldn't find any hard data. Instagram. Arsenal (#38 from your list) has 21.9m followers and Dallas Cowboys (#1 from your list) has 3.9m followers.
      - TulliusCicero 5y ago
        Hmm, that's a good point. Interesting that the profitability and team value is so different.
      - astura 5y ago
        WWE (professional wrestling) has 26.2m followers on Instagram. But it's almost certainly not more popular than soccer.
        smcl 5y ago
        Yeah it's more popular than Arsenal Football Club ... but that's one club. There are twenty in the English Premier League. And that's a single (albeit huge) league within the English league system, which is one of about four countries in Europe alone who you could probably say the same about.
        caddemon 5y ago
        Is it more popular than Arsenal though? I think the problem here is that following a league versus following a team are different actions. I am well aware of the Dallas Cowboys and watch quite a few of their games, but I would never follow their official social media accounts, because I fucking hate them. I suppose it depends how we define popularity, but the original question was about being well-known.
        smcl 5y ago
        Yeah this is just a discussion based on the assumption that instagram accurately reflects popularity/renown, it's entirely possible that is not actually true
    - pandem 5y ago
      That has more to do with relegation in European football than anything else. A bottom tier NFL team is at least 2 billion because you know they will be in the league in 20 years. A bottom tier EPL team is likely worth a few hundred billion as it will cost money to stay in the Premier League. The fact that there are football teams so high on the list should tell you of the global brand value they have.
    - nicoburns 5y ago
      It's worth bearing in mind that while they certainly make a lot of money, sports teams in Europe aren't primarily run as profit-making entities (they are sporting entities before all else). To the point that the national government stepped in to block a recent move by premier league clubs to form a new pan-european league which would have generated more money, but would have undermined the spirit of fair competition between teams by removing promotion and demotion between leagues. Another example that occurred to me: I understand that American sports actually have regular breaks specifically to facilitate adverts. Whereas football (soccer) matches have two uninterrupted halves with a single 15 minute break in between.
    - carschno 5y ago
      By the time of writing this, it looks like Barnsley has replaced the Dallas Cowboys as most valuable sports team. I suppose some Barnsley F.C. fan has had some fun with Wikipedia.
    - caddemon 5y ago
      It'd be difficult to directly measure "well known because of sports team", which I agree is a completely different question, but I think there are a few proxies you could use to try to address the question. If you normalize whatever measure of sports team popularity by other measures of a city's prominence/global reach it might turn up something. Just thinking on the US scale if you took each team's popularity and divided it by the size of the associated city (population), the Green Bay Packers would probably come out on top of US pro sports, which seems accurate.
    - yywwbbn 5y ago
      I think that’s partly because most US teams are run like business (i.e. their owners want them to be profitable) whereas European football is largely a competition between Russian and Gulf oligarchs on who can spend more money. This is especially the case in England, e.g. the two Spanish clubs near the top of the list are not privately owned.
- rowanajmarshall 5y ago
  That depends on your family and friends of course, but I live fairly close to Arsenal stadium, and I promise you people travel from all-over to see games there.
- dagw 5y ago
  I know tons of people who have visited many US cities and not one of them went to see one of that cities major sports teams. On the other hand I know several people who don't live in the UK yet travel to London or Liverpool at least once a year to watch their favorite football team play. What does that prove?
  - TulliusCicero 5y ago
    Fair, my thought process was more around "how many people wouldn't know about London if their sports teams disappeared?" And my intuition was, "not many, because London is a global city for lots of reasons," but it's possible I was wrong about that and some people only know about London because of their EPL teams. The thought feels very odd to me.
    - dagw 5y ago
      Obviously nobody 'only' knows London because of their sports team. But that is different from saying that London doesn't have many globally well known teams or that there aren't a fair number people that travel to London from all over Europe primarily to watch those teams play.
      - TulliusCicero 5y ago
        Well, I did say known for pro sports teams. I guess exactly what that means is debatable, especially when a city is famous for many things.
- ddek 5y ago
  I can’t speak for Paris, but London is a major sporting destination. British sports are completely orthogonal to American sports, so it seems a bit disingenuous to say that ‘no one visits London for sport’ from an American perspective. No Brit will go to the US to watch MLS. Americans care less about Soccer, Rugby and Cricket, but much of the rest of the world does. London-based Chelsea, Arsenal and Tottenham are the 7th, 8th and 10th most valuable soccer teams worldwide. Chelsea won the champions league last year. All three teams play in Europe (almost) every year. Wembley Stadium is the publicly funded national soccer stadium, and hosted the recent Euros final. It is a regular host of European club competition finals, including the Champions League. Lords is the home of cricket. It hosted the World Cup final a few years ago, and is a mandatory stop on international tours. It almost causes diplomatic incidents if a tour of England skips Lords. London also has The Oval, traditional host to the last test of the summer. Accordingly, many famous test series have been won there. Wimbledon is the most prestigious and historic tennis tournament in the world. It’s staunch traditionalism is polarising online, but it’s perpetually sold out, and ‘ground passes’ (a ticket to all the smaller courts) have queues for days. I’m an annual queue-er, I’ve met people from all continents.
  - lostlogin 5y ago
    > all continents. All?!
    - ddek 5y ago
      I once went with a friend who was a structural engineer for the British Antarctic Survey, so it’s tenuous, but yes.
- skrebbel 5y ago
  Your argument appears to be that you, personally, don't care much for the sports being played in those cities (and neither do your friends), and therefore those cities are making a mistake supporting said sports financially. Can you really not see the flaw in that? I think you're undermining the rest of your argument (which I personally think is pretty decent) by defending the "sports in London/Paris/etc doesn't matter" angle so hard across multiple subthreads.
  - cycomanic 5y ago
    Well the argument was actually in the article we are discussing here, which says it is a bad financial investment. I actually believe that even on a back of the envelope calculation it's hard to imagine how one can come up with this being a net positive. Let's argue that a stadium brings in 1M visitors a year (which is a high number) . If a stadium costs 1B then the city (through taxes etc) needs to make around 100 per person for it to be a good investment (10% return). And we haven't even considered the costs of externalities, like large traffic jams during games, cleanup etc.. I find it difficult to imagine that this works.
    - skrebbel 5y ago
      Yes but I'm not responding to the article but to a particular comment in a subthread about benefits that can't be expressed in terms of money.
    - vel0city 5y ago
      > bad financial investment > needs to make around 100 per person for it to be a good investment (10% return) The goal of a government isn't to make a profit.
- cameronh90 5y ago
  There are so many reasons to visit cities like London or Paris that individually each reason only makes up a small number of visitors percentage wise. I don't personally know anyone who came to London to see the Queen but it seems lots of people do. Living here and experiencing the carnage common after football matches, I can promise you that a shit load of international and domestic tourists come to watch football.
vasco 5y ago
It is true though, those cities have big teams but aren't known because of the teams existing. I'd wager many more people know about Paris the city than PSG the club.

TulliusCicero 5y ago

Why? Tons of friends and family of mine have visited those cities, I've never heard of any of them doing it to see their sports teams.

yywwbbn 5y ago
I’m sure that globally London and probably Paris (probably a bit more debatable) are much better know for their professional sports teams than any city in the US.
- TulliusCicero 5y ago
  No London team even breaks the top 10 of most valuable sports team, but there are several US entries there, so that seems unlikely: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forbes%27_list_of_the_most_valuable_sports_teams https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forbes%27_list_of_the_most_val... I tried googling more directly for global popularity/famousness, but couldn't find any hard data. And of course there's the issue of "has well known sports teams" vs "well known for their sports team". The former you could probably get data on somewhere, but the latter, I doubt it.
  - Symbiote 5y ago
    Money isn't everything, and it's relative. Travel outside the USA and every kid you meet has heard of Chelsea, Arsenal and Tottenham. If I were French or Spanish rather than British, these kids would say PSG or Real Madrid instead. The fans don't have as much money as Americans, but there are 10-15x as many followers on Facebook. But I would argue England is well known for its sports teams rather than London. (There's also Manchester, Liverpool etc.)
    - TulliusCicero 5y ago
      > Travel outside the USA and every kid you meet has heard of Chelsea, Arsenal and Tottenham. If I were French or Spanish rather than British, these kids would say PSG or Real Madrid instead. I think what you mean by "travel outside the USA" might be "travel in Europe". I'd bet that you'd get more recognition of the Lakers in, say, China than any of those Premier League teams. > But I would argue England is well known for its sports teams rather than London. (There's also Manchester, Liverpool etc.) That's fair, those two cities are probably known for their football teams moreso than anything else.
      - srhngpr 5y ago
        >I think what you mean by "travel outside the USA" might be "travel in Europe". I'd bet that you'd get more recognition of the Lakers in, say, China than any of those Premier League teams. Hard disagree on this one. It is in fact "outside the USA" because globally (not just in Europe), English Premier League teams like Manchester United, Liverpool, Chelsea, Arsenal, Tottenham, etc. are extremely popular, especially in China.
        goosedragons 5y ago
        Nobody cares in Canada either. So "outside the USA" is wrong.
        TulliusCicero 5y ago
        https://www.sportspromedia.com/news/nba-china-most-popular-sports-league-premier-league-champions-league-curry/ https://www.sportspromedia.com/news/nba-china-most-popular-s... > The National Basketball Association (NBA) has been named the most popular sports league in China in a recent survey undertaken by Ampere Analysis. > Soccer’s English Premier League and Uefa Champions League ranked second and third respectively, in the report that conducted research with Chinese internet users. So, the EPL is indeed popular there...but not as popular as the NBA.
        bprieto 5y ago
  - HunOL 5y ago
    >I tried googling more directly for global popularity/famousness, but couldn't find any hard data. Instagram. Arsenal (#38 from your list) has 21.9m followers and Dallas Cowboys (#1 from your list) has 3.9m followers.
    - TulliusCicero 5y ago
      Hmm, that's a good point. Interesting that the profitability and team value is so different.
    - astura 5y ago
      WWE (professional wrestling) has 26.2m followers on Instagram. But it's almost certainly not more popular than soccer.
      - smcl 5y ago
        Yeah it's more popular than Arsenal Football Club ... but that's one club. There are twenty in the English Premier League. And that's a single (albeit huge) league within the English league system, which is one of about four countries in Europe alone who you could probably say the same about.
        caddemon 5y ago
        Is it more popular than Arsenal though? I think the problem here is that following a league versus following a team are different actions. I am well aware of the Dallas Cowboys and watch quite a few of their games, but I would never follow their official social media accounts, because I fucking hate them. I suppose it depends how we define popularity, but the original question was about being well-known.
        smcl 5y ago
        Yeah this is just a discussion based on the assumption that instagram accurately reflects popularity/renown, it's entirely possible that is not actually true
  - pandem 5y ago
    That has more to do with relegation in European football than anything else. A bottom tier NFL team is at least 2 billion because you know they will be in the league in 20 years. A bottom tier EPL team is likely worth a few hundred billion as it will cost money to stay in the Premier League. The fact that there are football teams so high on the list should tell you of the global brand value they have.
  - nicoburns 5y ago
    It's worth bearing in mind that while they certainly make a lot of money, sports teams in Europe aren't primarily run as profit-making entities (they are sporting entities before all else). To the point that the national government stepped in to block a recent move by premier league clubs to form a new pan-european league which would have generated more money, but would have undermined the spirit of fair competition between teams by removing promotion and demotion between leagues. Another example that occurred to me: I understand that American sports actually have regular breaks specifically to facilitate adverts. Whereas football (soccer) matches have two uninterrupted halves with a single 15 minute break in between.
  - carschno 5y ago
    By the time of writing this, it looks like Barnsley has replaced the Dallas Cowboys as most valuable sports team. I suppose some Barnsley F.C. fan has had some fun with Wikipedia.
  - caddemon 5y ago
    It'd be difficult to directly measure "well known because of sports team", which I agree is a completely different question, but I think there are a few proxies you could use to try to address the question. If you normalize whatever measure of sports team popularity by other measures of a city's prominence/global reach it might turn up something. Just thinking on the US scale if you took each team's popularity and divided it by the size of the associated city (population), the Green Bay Packers would probably come out on top of US pro sports, which seems accurate.
  - yywwbbn 5y ago
    I think that’s partly because most US teams are run like business (i.e. their owners want them to be profitable) whereas European football is largely a competition between Russian and Gulf oligarchs on who can spend more money. This is especially the case in England, e.g. the two Spanish clubs near the top of the list are not privately owned.
rowanajmarshall 5y ago
That depends on your family and friends of course, but I live fairly close to Arsenal stadium, and I promise you people travel from all-over to see games there.
dagw 5y ago
I know tons of people who have visited many US cities and not one of them went to see one of that cities major sports teams. On the other hand I know several people who don't live in the UK yet travel to London or Liverpool at least once a year to watch their favorite football team play. What does that prove?
- TulliusCicero 5y ago
  Fair, my thought process was more around "how many people wouldn't know about London if their sports teams disappeared?" And my intuition was, "not many, because London is a global city for lots of reasons," but it's possible I was wrong about that and some people only know about London because of their EPL teams. The thought feels very odd to me.
  - dagw 5y ago
    Obviously nobody 'only' knows London because of their sports team. But that is different from saying that London doesn't have many globally well known teams or that there aren't a fair number people that travel to London from all over Europe primarily to watch those teams play.
    - TulliusCicero 5y ago
      Well, I did say known for pro sports teams. I guess exactly what that means is debatable, especially when a city is famous for many things.
ddek 5y ago
I can’t speak for Paris, but London is a major sporting destination. British sports are completely orthogonal to American sports, so it seems a bit disingenuous to say that ‘no one visits London for sport’ from an American perspective. No Brit will go to the US to watch MLS. Americans care less about Soccer, Rugby and Cricket, but much of the rest of the world does. London-based Chelsea, Arsenal and Tottenham are the 7th, 8th and 10th most valuable soccer teams worldwide. Chelsea won the champions league last year. All three teams play in Europe (almost) every year. Wembley Stadium is the publicly funded national soccer stadium, and hosted the recent Euros final. It is a regular host of European club competition finals, including the Champions League. Lords is the home of cricket. It hosted the World Cup final a few years ago, and is a mandatory stop on international tours. It almost causes diplomatic incidents if a tour of England skips Lords. London also has The Oval, traditional host to the last test of the summer. Accordingly, many famous test series have been won there. Wimbledon is the most prestigious and historic tennis tournament in the world. It’s staunch traditionalism is polarising online, but it’s perpetually sold out, and ‘ground passes’ (a ticket to all the smaller courts) have queues for days. I’m an annual queue-er, I’ve met people from all continents.
- lostlogin 5y ago
  > all continents. All?!
  - ddek 5y ago
    I once went with a friend who was a structural engineer for the British Antarctic Survey, so it’s tenuous, but yes.
skrebbel 5y ago
Your argument appears to be that you, personally, don't care much for the sports being played in those cities (and neither do your friends), and therefore those cities are making a mistake supporting said sports financially. Can you really not see the flaw in that? I think you're undermining the rest of your argument (which I personally think is pretty decent) by defending the "sports in London/Paris/etc doesn't matter" angle so hard across multiple subthreads.
- cycomanic 5y ago
  Well the argument was actually in the article we are discussing here, which says it is a bad financial investment. I actually believe that even on a back of the envelope calculation it's hard to imagine how one can come up with this being a net positive. Let's argue that a stadium brings in 1M visitors a year (which is a high number) . If a stadium costs 1B then the city (through taxes etc) needs to make around 100 per person for it to be a good investment (10% return). And we haven't even considered the costs of externalities, like large traffic jams during games, cleanup etc.. I find it difficult to imagine that this works.
  - skrebbel 5y ago
    Yes but I'm not responding to the article but to a particular comment in a subthread about benefits that can't be expressed in terms of money.
  - vel0city 5y ago
    > bad financial investment > needs to make around 100 per person for it to be a good investment (10% return) The goal of a government isn't to make a profit.
cameronh90 5y ago
There are so many reasons to visit cities like London or Paris that individually each reason only makes up a small number of visitors percentage wise. I don't personally know anyone who came to London to see the Queen but it seems lots of people do. Living here and experiencing the carnage common after football matches, I can promise you that a shit load of international and domestic tourists come to watch football.

vasco 5y ago

It is true though, those cities have big teams but aren't known because of the teams existing. I'd wager many more people know about Paris the city than PSG the club.