(12-24-2012 10:20 AM)thegalen Wrote: http://espnmediazone.com/us/press-releas.../11/60498/
Just as we saw with the rankings plotted against population, there's a lot of clustering at the top and then the tail flattens out. You touched on the trickiest aspect of gleaning info from this data: a city may be ranked highly because of fandom that's baked into the cake for legacy teams. So if Kansas City has a 2.8, let's say 50% are KU watchers and 25% are K State/Mizzou fans, you've got .7 of the 2.8 left for fans of "other" (to include WSU). How much goes to WSU, how much goes to miscellaneous teams? The other interesting angle is the regional sports/college basketball "ecology." You touched on the impact of pro-teams on amateur viewership, but just as important is a school's geographic footprint. I'll use the University of Richmond and VCU as an example. Richmond pulls a ton of kids from New Jersey and other New England states. VCU is pulling mostly Northern Virginia/Norfolk-Hampton Roads students (2 of our 5 starters are from the 757). So same city, but very different connections to said city, and big variation in the geographic distribution of alumni. Another interesting complication is sort of a chicken and egg/Field of Dreams question of path dependancy: if you build it, will they come? That is, in the case of a former MVC, CAA or A10 team, would being in a new elite basketball conference change the market? Obviously you're not going to replicate Tobacco Row's culture by bringing in better opponents, but I suspect that some markets (and regionally connected mega-markets) have a higher upside than other. Interesting stuff, thanks for the post and the data!
Actually, the data I used came from that ESPN article, though I had to do some stuff to account for populations and such.
The interesting thing to me is that I don't think basketball markets are "tapped out" as much as other sports markets. Look at the top markets (from a ratings standpoint). Most of them are near a collection of strong teams, like North Carolina triangle (or the Indiana, Louisville, Kentucky triangle). I seems like these teams tend to add viewers fairly linearly.
The reasoning, I think, is that these closely linked cities tend to produce fans that watch games of interest from multiple teams. This affect looks like it has several factors that influence it: proximity, similarity in competition, similarity in population (size and demographics, and a few others.
From what I've seen in the data, the most important factors that permit this "fan-sharing" are close distances and a similar sports profile. For example, Wichita, Omaha, and Tulsa all likely share some fans that would consider Wichita State or Creighton games to be games of interest (they would watch even if they were not directly a fan of the school). However, Kansas City would have a smaller percentage of this affect because it has a different sports profile even though the distances are reduced.
The other interesting things about this are that, as you point out, students and alumni aren't all clustered around the city closest to the college. This means that the school can create these "games of interest" even in areas far away from the university. You mentioned VCU (which also draws from the Washington D.C. market for students), but another example is Saint Louis. Saint Louis is a Midwestern school, but they have alumni mostly around the east coast and mostly draw students from those areas. Thus, they don't draw incredibly well from the Saint Louis market but do get a lot of love from their own market but certainly should draw some from a multitude of large cities on the east coast. I shouldn't need to mention that this sort of thing also affects recruiting.
In essence, it boils down to which teams are interesting and whether or not the population around them cares about college basketball. Teams can create interest by being good for long periods of time (blue-blood schools), by developing rivalries with schools in other cities, and by creating lasting attachment (students, alumni).
The major factors that can prevent a team from developing this interest are competing sports (NFL especially), small populations to draw from, and long periods of futility.
So, let's look at the "webs of interest" for some of these teams. I'd appreciate it if people contributed their knowledge because I'm don't know everything about every school. Essentially, just list the cities that may have influence on, in descending order.
Here are the schools that I can reasonably extrapolate on:
Wichita State: Wichita > Tulsa > Kansas City > Omaha >> Houston (Wichita State has had consecutive recruits from Houston for longer than Houston University)
Creighton: Omaha > Wichita >> Kansas City > Des Moines = Texas (in general, they recruit a lot from the Texas area)
Xavier: Cincinnati > Dayton >> Columbus >> Indianapolis = Lexington = Louisville = Louisville
Dayton: Dayton > Cincinnati >> Columbus >> Indianapolis = Lexington = Louisville = Louisville
Butler: Indianapolis > Dayton > Fort Wayne >> Columbus = Cincinnati
VCU: Richmond > Norfolk = Washington D.C > Virginia Beach
Saint Louis: Saint Louis >> Kansas City = Springfield > East coast cities (Scattered)
I can't really give an accurate count of what this means in terms of ratings, eyeballs, but it does give some idea to the impact that these teams would have. Xavier, Dayton, and Butler are all in the Mecca of college basketball (surrounded by the most supportive basketball communities), while other schools draw from a variety of different areas. Again, I would appreciate it if fans from other schools can help define their schools net-of-interest better.
