We live in a beautiful city with some of the best weather in the country, yet by my estimation we as San Diegans have the biggest inferiority complex of any city when it comes to sports. We're told that this is a "small" market city so often than it must be true. We know that we have a reasonably sized population and plenty of wealth. So why do the Padres never spend on significant free agent additions, or have a payroll commensurate with all the cities we think we're so much better than? What really makes us such a sub-par market? I'm going to attempt to delve into it here.
In early 2011, the online version of Forbes magazine named San Diego the fifth most miserable sports city in these United States. Their criteria seemed a little strange to me though. Some of the cities that were supposedly even more "sports miserable" than San Diego had experienced some pretty great successes, and more recent championships. Forbes included "tough losses in big games" heavily into the formula, so that a town like San Diego - which rarely ever sees a big game to begin with - got pushed down the list a little. I won't go into that here, but I'll just say we should be a little bit higher (lower?) on that list. Seattle has made a huge comeback with the Seahawks and likely the return of the Sonics, and when your baseball team wins at least 90 games about 15 seasons in a row (Atlanta) with a recent World Series title thrown in, well I'm just not buying. I make Buffalo out to be the most miserable sports city, but can't really figure out why they have a team in the first place. Isn't it sort of like Green Bay without the rabid fans?
Population
Anyway, back to the task at hand. I started looking at some basic census figures. Let's start with a quick look at population. When you look at major league cities, we're 7th in terms of population within the immediate city (just under 1.3 million), behind NY/LA/CHI/HOU/PHI/PHX. So on the surface that seems pretty good. But what really makes a market is not the immediate population, but the greater captive market area that a team has access to. This refers to those areas surrounding the city that are not only within feasible driving distance to the occasional game - or even overnight stay for such an outing - but also have no competition from other teams. When you look at it this way, we're tiny. St. Louis, which is way down the population list, has a gigantic larger market area that includes just about half of Kansas and Illinois and large portions of the states further east and south. There's not another baseball team until Atlanta to the southeast, and the Texas teams to the southwest.
By comparison, San Diego has its immediate MSA (the San Diego–Carlsbad–San Marcos Metropolitan Statistical Area) and that's it. There's no population to speak of to the east of El Cajon, there's international border to the the south, and there are multiple larger market teams starting at the county line to the north. We're all we've got. Looking at total market size, let's just call us average to below. For me to paint an accurate picture of the actual market size for each team would take a week, and I'm not doing that for free.
Affinity for the Padres Among Population
While reading the main post and comments by the author on THIS PAGE I found myself agreeing quite heartily with the idea that St. Louis is a much larger baseball market than Toronto, but Toronto is many times a better NHL market than St. Louis. Affinity for the product is a huge part of this equation. So how great is our collective affinity for the Padres? By my calculations, not good.
I began looking at these numbers to get some kind of estimate of what percentage of people here were born into being fans of the Padres. Of the 1,282,800 people living within the City of San Diego (don't fact check me bro, these numbers are always being revised) the census indicated that 554,735, or 43% are natives. But this refers to natives of the state. Within all the data I can dig up I wasn't able to find out what percentage of that number is native to the actual market area.
Within most markets this number is relatively accurate, as for instance, the "native" population in Boston is native to the state of Massachusetts, and so on and so forth. It's reasonable to estimate that the 45% of natives within the Boston population are primarily Red Sox fans. Not the case with San Diego at all. With no numbers, I'm going to guess that anywhere from 15% to 30% of the population of San Diego is native to our actual market area. Note, the cities that scored highest on this list were all cities that aren't high on the list of cities people want to move to - Pittsburgh, Detroit, Cleveland topped the list at 73% to 74%. San Diego is on the opposite end of the spectrum, a city that everybody wants to move to - and continue to root for their hometown team.
In addition to having one of the least loyal population bases, we also have a huge segment of the population here which by and large does not care about the sport to begin with. By this I'm referring to the foreign-born population, where we are tied for around 6th largest percentage of foreign born residents among the major league cities. Being married into a Mexican family and having a relatively wide reaching network of foreign-born friends and acquaintances, I can say this comfortably: Their kids may care about the Padres having gained some appreciation through osmosis, but they do not. The only time I hear any of them bring up the Padres is to deride them. If they're doing well you hear nothing, but you hear plenty when they stink. Which has been often. In conversation, you're very likely to hear "man the Padres SUCK." but have a zero percent chance of hearing even a neutral comment like "do you think Headley's season was for real?" ZERO chance.
So let's sum this up. About 26% of the population would rather be watching El Tri play a friendly than watching the Padres play a game that counts, and the vast majority of the "natives" aren't native to our market area. Meanwhile most other teams have generations stacked upon generations of fans, from the early 20th century who have never stopped supporting the team or moved out of the area. I haven't yet mentioned the cost of living or the fact that the Padres are still one of the youngest teams in baseball. Historical significance makes a huge difference, as the rabid fan bases at Chavez Ravine and in San Francisco show us when compared to the atmosphere in Anaheim or San Diego.
There's one clearly inferior market than San Diego and that's Miami - easily the worst baseball market in the country. It's 58% foreign born, only 28% native to the state of Florida, and small in numbers as well as income. I'd lump San Diego in with a few other select teams as being in line behind them, but no market is close to Miami.
This all just goes to say that yes, we are a small market. Not only that, but much smaller than most onlookers would know.
Maximizing the Love
The Padres' challenge is to maximize and improve the fan base we have here. How do they do that?
Let's start with winning. This new ownership group is going to attempt to win by developing players from within. Recent selections in the draft look promising and we should start seeing more benefit from the Dominican academy in the coming years. Chase Headley is long gone, by the way, and I think we should trade him now rather than make some half-hearted attempt at signing a guy who has one good year and whose market value will never be higher, to a long-term contract. If the Padres did that, it would make him the only really good player on the team signed to a long-term deal. Really good meaning you're buying into last year, which I'm not). By the time his deal is almost up is when we'd be truly competitive. Market him to some team that is contending and has a legitimate Top 25 prospect who will be ready within the next year.
Alongside the group of players that comes to the majors over the next 3 years, the Padres must maximize high draft picks (like the Rays with Longoria/Price, continue to make astute minor free-agent moves, and when the team looks close they MUST begin to spend by re-signing key players and possibly adding a well respected and young free agent (look at the Prince Fielder contract, and not ARod or Albert Pujols). When the opportunity presents itself and the team is on the upswing, the payroll must increase and the most key players must be retained. The front office has to have the savvy to differentiate between players they can afford to lose and those they can't.
Treating the players right will be another key. They have to want to stay in San Diego and the organization has to be seen as a classy, top-flight team. The Cardinals are a great example - players want to stay there, even if the Cardinals have to make tough (and usually very astute) decisions and get rid of some of them. No stories LIKE THIS anymore, please!
The insular nature of recent population growth due to the cost of housing and the economic downturn actually could help. At San Diego State we're seeing some really rabid (multi-cultural and native to the area) fans of the Aztecs basketball team which rival the fans for any other college basketball team in the country. That type of concerted fan base and culture needs to be developed city wide. Some creative tapping of the Mexican market would also be advisable. Spanish broadcasts have been sent on the airwaves for many years, but how about some type of express shuttles to and from the game once they get across the border? Discounts at local restaurants or even food in the ballpark for those that are willing to brave the border wait? I can imagine that an hour to two-hour border wait might be offset by a pair of discounted tickets, free transportation, and then an evening in America's Finest City with quick shuttle service back to the border afterward.
In the end, winning can conquer all, but winning the right way would be the best and most likely way to overcome the market shortcomings. Grow the product for good by acting like a Major League team.
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