May 22, 2019
The Sixers may not always be the top team, but they make Philadelphia one of the best places to be for basketball. The City of Brotherly Love is ranked among the top 10 best cities in the United States to be a basketball fan.
Philly ranked No. 8 overall with a total score of 44.89, according to data compiled by WalletHub. The factors contributing to this score is the city's a No. 17 ranking among NBA cities and a No. 4 ranking among college basketball towns.
But as nice as this is, the Philly ranked No. 25 out of 27 city's, which the study determined mean it has the least engaged NBA fans. To make matters worse, the Sixers also ranked at No. 24 as one of the worst-performing NBA teams, which stings a little after losing out 92-90 on a last second against the Raptors earlier this month. Did the people compiling this study miss that the Sixers finished third in the Eastern Conference this season.
Philly wasn't the only Pennsylvania city included in WalletHub's rankings. Loretto, Cambria county – located in central Pennsylvania and home to Saint Francis University – finished as one of the top five most accessible college basketball stadiums in the U.S. The small college town also ranked No. 6 overall among small city with a population less than 100,000.
On the overall list, Philadelphia was sandwiched between Chicago at No. 9 and Oklahoma City at No. 7, and the top spot went to Boston, followed by Los Angeles and Oakland. San Antonio and Salt Lake City rounded out the top five.
WalletHub gathered data from a number of resources, including the U.S. Census Bureau, ESPN, NBA, NCAA and team websites. Using this info they created a scoring system based on factors such as stadium capacity and attendance, championship and division wins, fan engagement, popularity ranking, and number of coaches in the past 10 years.
The survey scored based on two fronts: NBA teams and NCAA teams. NBA cities could receive a total score of 70, while the max score for a college basketball town was 30 possible points.
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