Quote:
Originally Posted by OldDutch
I dunno, I won't profess to be an expert, but in my travels there to visit friends, I have found Miami itself to be very ethnic, Latin American, African american, etc.
Ft. Lauderdale is more white, more suburban.
They mostly like the Heat (cause of obvious reasons) in Miami, even the Marlin's in their fancy new stadium has a hard time drawing. The dolphins are somewhat popular, but I wouldn't say the town is in love with them either.
Honestly college football in Miami and Florida itself is huge. Everything else is popular, but for a large city I wouldn't say sports run Miami. It's just a really different place.
So I think it's like the Coyotes, would they do better in Scottsdale or Downtown? Or are they better in suburban Glendale? Hard to say, but I can see why they went there (yes taxes too) but also probably demographics is key.
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Miami is a terrible sports town maybe the worst in the US. They are supporting the current 'dream team' Heat but the moment they stop winning they will leave. The Dolphins were competitive this season almost making the playoffs and the stadium was just full of empty seats. Officially they played at 85% capacity (30th in the league) but as we all know that only means sold seats. They were lucky to get to 75% capacity for any of their games. They build that beautiful new ballpark for the Marlins and they still only averaged 17k in attendance which equated to only 100 more fans per game than the old stadium.
There is nothing the Panthers can do to get better attendance outside of becoming an elite team going deep into the playoffs annually as Miami will only support a winner and just barely at that.