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Available-Ad-5609 t1_j1u6j84 wrote

Reply to comment by Jumpshot1370 in [OC] North American cities by number of major sports championships (Updated December 2022) by twintig5

A couple points to (partially) explain this. Metro area population, not “city limits” population, is what you should be looking at. San Antonio isn’t 5x the size of Pittsburgh, it’s ~10% larger, and Columbus isn’t bigger than Cincy and Cleveland, all three are within ~10% of each other. Second, the teams don’t necessarily reflect the biggest cities today, but years ago. Go back to 1970 and Pittsburgh was 2.5x San Antonio, Cleveland was 2.5x Columbus, and Cincy was >50% larger than Columbus.

And then there’s Green Bay.

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Jumpshot1370 t1_j1vdsir wrote

I am aware of this, but still find it interesting that many large cities (ex. Austin, Columbus, El Paso, San Jose) lack NFL, MLB, and NBA teams.

Some large cities, like Colorado Springs and Fort Worth, are overshadowed by nearby larger cities (Denver and Dallas, respectively). Austin might be overshadowed by San Antonio, which is larger, although the former is becoming a major tech center akin to Silicon Valley.

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