Study: Clippers, Warriors Have NBA's Most Loyal Fans

[rondohondo]

A study designed for The Wall Street Journal by sports-reference.com looked at NBA teams' attendance for the past 10 seasons. It then weighed certain factors like city population, arena capacity, prior winning percentage and whether there are other, competing teams in the same market.

By those measures, Clippers fans are the most devoted, while Golden State Warriors fans are in second place.

Presumably those teams get extra credit for continuing to post relatively strong attendance figures while sporting a combined winning percentage of .399 since the 2000-01 season.

The Chicago Bulls, Cleveland Cavaliers and Dallas Mavericks, who lead the league in fans per game, round out the study's top five, while the Lakers come in sixth. In last place are the Philadelphia 76ers, just ahead of the Minnesota Timberwolves and New Jersey Nets.

haha wow these studies are hilarious......

Boston is not in the top 5 of loyal NBA fans?

[PLamb]

Yeah, all 10 of them

[Who]

Golden State and Chicago would be at the top of my list for loyal fans. Also, the Knicks.

[PosImpos]

Boston gets less credit because we have other big sports teams that people pay attention to when the Celtics are doing badly.

[RAcker]

It's funny that they are only taking into consideration the fans that live in the city where the team is based.  No teams have more fans spread throughout the world than the Boston Celtics and the LA Lakers.  Go to a road game and you'll see exactly what I mean.

[PierceMVP08]

I'd like to see what the methodology really was.  The Celtics had strong attendance figures throught their bad years.  Also, The mavs had poor attendance during their bad years.  Might the Clippers maintian strong attendance figures through package deals i.e. buy 4 for the price of three?  Just some thoughts.

Also, is attendance really the best way to measure loyalty.  I don't measure my team loyalty by how much i spend on them.  I went to more games back when we were bad than i do now because its too expensive now.  Does that mean I'm any less loyal? No.  what about all the games i watch, the time i spend online or talking about the team?  Of course it would be very difficult to measure this for each fan base but why do the study when you don't give a thorough answer?

If I were to name top fan bases I would say this (in no particular order)

Boston
GS
Chicago
Ny
Utah
San Antonio
Portland
Toronto
Los Angeles Lakers

[MMacOH]

from reading the post it seems like they considered attendance and then weighed how good the team was during that team and whether there are other teams around to pull interest.  The Clippers and Warriors are at the top because they have other teams around, terrible records but are still near capacity every night.

I don't follow the Celtics, but has their attendance always been good even during the bad years?  I know the Cavs attendance was just awful when they were terrible

[PLamb]

from reading the post it seems like they considered attendance and then weighed how good the team was during that team and whether there are other teams around to pull interest.  The Clippers and Warriors are at the top because they have other teams around, terrible records but are still near capacity every night.

I don't follow the Celtics, but has their attendance always been good even during the bad years?  I know the Cavs attendance was just awful when they were terrible

The old Boston Garden held considerably less people than the TD Garden and the Celtics always put about 16000-17000 people into the place year after year after year once they moved into the new building but never sold out the place consistently

It never matter whether the team was good or not, 16000-17000 people were going to be there on average no matter what

The C's only started going to full capacity numbers in 2007-08

[indeedproceed]

A study designed for The Wall Street Journal by sports-reference.com looked at NBA teams' attendance for the past 10 seasons. It then weighed certain factors like city population, arena capacity, prior winning percentage and whether there are other, competing teams in the same market.

By those measures, Clippers fans are the most devoted, while Golden State Warriors fans are in second place.

Presumably those teams get extra credit for continuing to post relatively strong attendance figures while sporting a combined winning percentage of .399 since the 2000-01 season.

The Chicago Bulls, Cleveland Cavaliers and Dallas Mavericks, who lead the league in fans per game, round out the study's top five, while the Lakers come in sixth. In last place are the Philadelphia 76ers, just ahead of the Minnesota Timberwolves and New Jersey Nets.

haha wow these studies are hilarious......

Boston is not in the top 5 of loyal NBA fans?

Clippers are well known for selling seats that don't get filled. Just because a ticket is sold doesn't mean anyone shows up.

[PosImpos]

I def. believe Knicks fans belong on this list.  Knicks fans are always crazy into their team and stuff even when they are awful.  Maybe it's just the dreams of LeBron though. 

[pearljammer10]

This doesnt surprise me all that much...While I know Celtics fans are incredibly loyal and diehards... The Red Sox and Patriots seem to dominate a lot of sports conversations in the area. I can go out and ask 5 to 10 people about the Celtics and hear all replies such as "eh I'm a football fan so I pretty much only watch the Patriots" or "I'm die hard Red Sox so I dont follow the Celtics all that much."

[jr_3421]

I have a hard time believing LA fans are more loyal than Boston fans. Boston has the most loyal fan base in terms of pro sports in the country. If you ask anyone from Boston who their favorite NBA team was, I guarantee virtually all would say the Celtics. That is how loyalty should be measured. If you go to LA or any other NBA city and ask the same question, I believe that there would be more variety in their answers. Going to games and rooting for teams are not exactly the same which is why this study I think is flawed.

[tony320]

Unbelievable! How is the Clippers on the top. are they serious. maybe because they share a arena with the lakers. no offense to clippers fans

[tony320]

I can attest to the Warriors having some pretty [dang] loyal fans, for as terrible as this franchise has been the past 15 years. I go to games & wonder if maybe we should boycott the warriors, & maybe our owner will get a clue. BTW, the oracle arena is pretty [dang] horrible.

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the 2010 nfl draft predicitions
   

[jambr380]

I was at the Magic game last night and I swear I have never been to a game where the fans were more excited (and I have been to a number of Celtics playoff games- recently moved down here). It was as if the city revolved around the Magic for a night. I tend to believe that one sport cities tend to be pretty loyal (Portland, Orlando, Utah, etc).

It also could be that Orlando beating the Celtics meant a lot more to these people than to fans of the Celtics beating Orlando. I guess in that sense it was kind of a joke. I have never been heckled so much in my life (including at Yankee stadium).