5 ms·

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 U

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
        Being the most popular sport league is not the same as being the most popular sport. Out of ten league positions, basket has #1 and #10. Soccer has #2, #3, #4, #6, #7 and #9.
        caddemon 5y ago
        Yeah but that wasn't the original statement, the argument was that a Chinese person would be more likely to recognize the LA Lakers than a London pro soccer team. So popularity of the NBA specifically is quite relevant. Also, you see people wearing NY Yankees hats globally. Some of them don't even seem to know anything about baseball and just think it is some sort of NY merch. But still there are absolutely American sports teams that have recognizable brands more globally.
  - fomine3 5y ago
    Counterpoint: US MLB teams are far more popular than Europe soccer teams, for Japanese.
- 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.

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
        Being the most popular sport league is not the same as being the most popular sport. Out of ten league positions, basket has #1 and #10. Soccer has #2, #3, #4, #6, #7 and #9.
        caddemon 5y ago
        Yeah but that wasn't the original statement, the argument was that a Chinese person would be more likely to recognize the LA Lakers than a London pro soccer team. So popularity of the NBA specifically is quite relevant. Also, you see people wearing NY Yankees hats globally. Some of them don't even seem to know anything about baseball and just think it is some sort of NY merch. But still there are absolutely American sports teams that have recognizable brands more globally.
- fomine3 5y ago
  Counterpoint: US MLB teams are far more popular than Europe soccer teams, for Japanese.
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.