Subscribe to RSSBoston vs. New York: The Ultimate Online Sports Fan Showdown
I recently moved to Boston from the New York metro area to join the Compete team. Along with the well wishes and going away parties, there was a running joke that my family would convert loyalties to the dreaded Boston sports teams.
When we arrived in Boston, I was shocked to see the die-hard Boston fans everywhere while Boston media dedicated hours to the teams, the players and the pride of New England athletics. I couldn’t help but feel that Boston took their sports a lot more seriously than the New York fans – or did they?
This age-old rivalry has been engrained in people’s lives for years with no end in sight. You can argue the number of championships, wins/losses and even who had the better players; but this article will be about YOU, the fan. The question…
What city’s sports fan are the most passionate, engaged and loyal?
Let’s lay the groundwork and then dive into the online numbers. According to the United States Census Bureau, the population of New York City rates the highest in the country with 8,391,881people while Boston ranks 20th with 645,160. The New York metro market has two NFL teams, two NBA teams, two MLB teams, three NHL teams and one MLS team. Boston has one team for each of the professional leagues above. To avoid the issue of scale, we’ll be looking at data that has no correlation to the size or number of fans. We are also going to look at the Compete CPE September data of all five leagues in five different ways.
• Let’s play ball – The average length of time spent by visitors on the Yankees official site (5:42) and Mets official site (7:29) is much greater than the Sox (5:14) giving New York the edge.
• To the hard court – Search referral share to the NBA.com might be low for our respective teams with the Heat and Lakers taking the spotlight, but it is a perfect way of measuring our fans. The score: New York Knicks (0.15%), New Jersey Nets (0.13%) and Boston Celtics (1.10%). Clearly Boston has an advantage in this category and on the court as well.
• The gridiron – With 100% more page views per visit than the Jets and 14% more than the Giants, the New England Patriots take this category with 6.58 page views per visit. Even though the 14% more page views are likely a result of Tom Brady’s hair, I still have to give the Pat’s fans the “W.”
• To the ice – Let’s see how many times in September hockey fans checked out their favorite team’s page: Bruins fans logged on to their team’s site 2.84 times while Rangers (2.51), Devils (2.17) and Islanders (2.72) trailed closely behind. This is a close call, but I think Boston wins with a late controversial penalty shot.
• On the pitch – That’s a soccer field for you non-‘football’ fans. Rounding out the survey are the New England Revolution and New York Red Bulls. With more visits per person, more page views per person and a true Facebook fan page, the New York Red Bulls edge the Revs in injury time.
With the NHL, NFL and NBA going to the Boston fans and the MLB and MLS going to New York fans, it seems like my original inclination was correct. However, I had one more form of measurement that I had to make to be sure before I crowned a winner.
When we averaged all the Boston and New York team sites, we find that in the very end, New York is the overall winner with higher ‘Average Stay’, ‘Visits per Person’ and ‘Pages per Person’. Start spreadin’ the news, New York fans… you’ve won this one.
All information is drawn from the Compete PRO Enterprise edition on Compete.com. For more information on the enterprise offering, please contact Gavin Blackmore at gblackmore@compete.com
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Aaron Smolick is the Senior Director of Marketing at Compete. Aaron spends his time at Compete building brand awareness and lead generations while managing the PR, the Kantar relationship and the day-to-day marketing efforts--he greases the wheels and connects the dots. Before Aaron joined the Compete team he ran the US division of the Samsung gaming division. He hopes to eventually climb the corporate ladder where the dots become larger. |
3 Comments
You lost me right after ‘On the pitch’…
NY can have the MLS. Boston owns the rest. no joke. Lets see who wins the most championships in 2011.
Im a boston red sox fan, purely because the owners of the baseball team NSV brought Liverpool a UK football team (soccer for people in the states), Liverpool was a great team in the 80s and and maintained that uptil 3 years ago when they got brought by Gillet and Hicks, ever since then they have been in financial problems. NSV brought the club, therefore i support them, i like the support they give to good quality teams.