[sportscurmudgeon]

djnemo65:

Sorry, but if you are going to assess the SPORTS fans in a city (note the use of the plural there) you have to look at how they support all the SPORTS available to them (note the use of the plural there).

When you do that, Washington DC is a BAD SPORTS TOWN. It is not as bad as Miami and not as bad as Atlanta, but that about lists all the major SPORTS cities in the US that are historically and demonstrably worse. Maybe New Orleans is worse, but NO has fewer sports for the fans there to ignore.

Washington lost TWO baseball teams. The one they have now - - in a brand new $612M stadium - - will not draw flies this year. In the stadium's inaugural year of 2008, you could walk up and get box seat tix to any game after July 4th. I know because I did that a couple of times.

Unless the Wizards of the Caps are in the playoffs, they play to capacities of 60-75%. For bad opponents, they play to capacities of 50%. That is what the WNBA does and whenever you are comparing a major sport's fan support to the WNBA, that is bad news. When those teams are in the playoffs - or in the hunt - they play to 90+% capacities. That is called "bandwagon fandom" or "fairweather fans" whichever you prefer.

When U-MD is hot in basketball, you can only get tix from scalpers. For the last 3 years you could get them in a thousand places and often at a discount to face value.

Once the "Ralph Friedgen Is A Football God" image wore thin, I could get a MD football ticket on game day for any oppoenent any time I wanted it.

AND - hold your breath - the Redskins do NOT sell out Fed Ex every week. In fact, I do not believe that Fed Ex has EVER been sold out for a football game. Those "premium seats" that sit empty every game (The glaring yellow ones you see on TV) are not sold to people who had something more important to do on game day; they were never sold in the first place. The NFL allows teams to count a sellout if they sell all the "regular tix" but not the "premium seats"; that's why the Redskins are on home TV all the time; but they DO NOT sell out every game. [And let's not forget how many Washington ticket holders are willing to sell their tix to fans of opposing teams. That happens to a much lesser extent in good SPORTS cities.)

AND the Redskins are the ONLY sports attraction in DC that can count on big crowds even if the team has not played well for several consecutive years. For any other franchise/college team, that would mean "no one in the seats and crickets for crowd noise". DC is indeed a bad SPORTS town.