Could Seattle Support New NBA and NHL Teams?

Not sure I agree one hundred percent with the purely even division of population to sports teams, and the caveat is not apples to apples when a city doesn't have a team from a less popular league like the WNBA or the MLS. But the concept is a good one. Interesting stuff.

What the study was asking

The question came from a Seattle PI Sports Blog item: could Seattle even support new NBA and NHL teams? It is the question every expansion and relocation argument eventually runs into, and the answer usually depends on how you count.

The measure and its flaw

The method under discussion divided a market's population evenly across its teams, which produces a clean number and a misleading one. A city without a WNBA or MLS club is not the same as a city that has one, because the leagues do not draw from the same pool of money, attention or nights in the calendar. Treating them as equivalent makes a light market look crowded.

Why it mattered to the project

Seattle was the destination in more realignment scenarios than any other city, and every one of those maps assumed a market that could carry a team. If the population math said the city was already full, the arena argument and the ownership argument would not matter. So the reply was brief but not idle: the number had to be read with the local history attached.

A reply, not a study

The post did not try to settle the question. It did what a blog does at its best: pointed at a piece of analysis, named the assumption doing the most work, and left the link for readers to make up their own minds.