Garrick
Awesome, lid.
Edmonton metro is only 1.1 million, so quite a bit smaller than the Tampa-St Petersburg area.
Yes, the Marlins owner is a complete nutbag. Frisked the residents of Miami-Dade for a rather strange stadium pretty damn hard, and has generally held the team back from being competitive. Still, there are plenty of other teams out there that do poorly and yet still get decent attendance. My Brewers were awful last year and still had around middle of the road attendance in the smallest market in baseball, for example.
Even when the Rays have been good, still nobody really shows up. They've had quite a few playoff games over the past 10 years that they couldn't sell out. Even when they're doing well, nobody seems arsed. Worst stadium? They'll have to take that up with Oakland. What's so terrible about the location? We don't have a downtown stadium in Milwaukee either, which has definitely prevented me from seeing games before.
As for NHL contraction, well we have this hockey arena in Milwaukee that the Bucks play in, if anybody is interested in moving
. No, seriously, the Bradley Center sight lines are built for hockey and all we have is a minor league team, despite being in a state that has a Minnesota-esque hockey culture. I can't speak for other Northern cities, but in Milwaukee we don't have the massive corporate sponsorship issue. The Bucks get garbage attendance because they're run extremely poorly and have been left to rot on the vine. When the Brewers sell out, the stadium is full. I don't think I have to vouch for the atmosphere or attendance at Lambeau up the road.
I will give you that it's still possible for a lot of these newer Southern teams to build fanbases over the next couple of decades, but what I'm really questioning is why MLS is at work adding three new teams down (and a 2nd in New York) there when there are plenty of other areas of the country that are ripe for pro soccer and have a better history of pro sporting culture.
