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From USA Today:
“Emory professor Michael Lewis ranked the Cowboys as the NFL’s top fan base, with the Patriots following at second, and the Eagles, Giants and Steelers rounding out the top five, in order. The top five was unchanged from the past two years, Lewis wrote.
Lewis wrote that he used “data on attendance, revenues, social media following and road attendance to develop statistical models of fan interest.”
Lewis added that he used those models to determine which fan bases “are more willing to spend or follow their teams after controlling for factors like market size and short-term changes in winning and losing.”
Lewis said that he used three measures of fan engagement to craft his list: fan equity (which he described as home box office revenues), social equity (which he described as engagement level in social media communities) and road equity (which he described as measured fan support on the road). Then, using those three components, Lewis generated what he called a “Brand Equity Factor” to rank all 32 teams.”
So with all those factors combined, Doc Lewis listed Colts fans at 12. They’re sandwiched between the Washington Football Team (11) and Falcons (13).
The Packers (duh) and Bears (also duh) are the only two other “midwestern/middle of the country” teams that are ranked above you.
Yes, the Colts dominate the Indianapolis sports market, but they are at juuuuust a tad disadvantage compared to that almost unbreakable top 5. All of those teams have been around for over 75 years. You had to listen to the games then, the forward pass was just being thrown around, and Adam Vinatieri was in his rookie season.
The Colts just spent their 35th season in Indianapolis.
That’s about two generations of fans more than what the Indianapolis Colts have been able to collect. In terms of NFL years, the Colts are basically ripe teenagers ready to take over the world.
If Luck and co. can rip off a few titles in the next 10 years, they’ll be well on their way to the top 5 of this poll that doesn’t really mean anything and there’s no real way to measure.
