Last week, we had another of Mike Chamernik’s “Question of the Week” series, the response was great, and Mike is back again with his next question.
by Mike Chamernik
The Utah Hockey Club will play its first regular season game this evening, at home against Chicago. After years of limbo as the Arizona Coyotes, the franchise announced a sale and move to Salt Lake City this past April. It came together very quickly.
For all the Utahns out there: What have the last few months been like? How excited are locals for NHL hockey? Was the NHL popular in the state prior to this season? How much merchandise and apparel are you seeing?
For everyone else: What was it like when a big league team moved to or expanded into your city or state? Did people drop old allegiances to pick up the new team? Was the team immediately popular, or did it take awhile for them to settle in? How did the city change as the result of gaining a team?
As I was telling Mike after he e-mailed me his question, as a lifelong New Yorker, I’ve never really experienced a big league team expanding into my city (excluding soccer); about the closest I came was the New Jersey Nets “returning” home to Long Island when they moved to Brooklyn. Of course, I grew up with the ABA New York Nets, who I saw quite often in the Nassau Coliseum (where the Nets played as well as the Islanders) which was about 5 minutes from my home, so I got to see Dr. J and Bill Melchionni and the rest of the Nets before they moved to the NBA (and Jersey). So, it wasn’t that big a deal to me when the Nets “returned” as in my heart they were always on Long Island. Other than that, all my local teams have been here since before I was born.
Can’t wait to hear the readers’ responses! OK guys…fire away!
In Nashville, the Titans were immediately accepted. Most likely due to a surreal first season that included a Super Bowl. I’d say old allegiances to other teams evaporated quicker for TN than other similar situations. The MCM probably did as much to make that team at home as anything. It’s all even mentioned in the movie Castaway (even though those people were technically from Memphis).
They have yet to re-reach those heights since. And their current costumes don’t help.
Orlando basically bullied MLS into expansion 10 years ago. On match days there are different amounts of opposing fans, especially since the Pink Team went out and bought an all star team, but the stands are at least 90% purple.
There’s a minor league soccer team coming to Portland, ME next spring and there seems to be a real buzz here–I see the team crest on hats and sweatshirts all over the place in town.
Same thing here in Rhode Island. A lot of buzz around our new team coming to the end of a successful first season that hopefully results in the playoffs. There’s some opposition from the older folks who miss the baseball team that moved to Worcester, but there’s been a lot of positivity and I’ve seen a lot of RIFC magnets on cars and people wearing merch throughout the state. The big thing is how it effects the MLS team. The Revolution had one of their best years in terms attendance and season ticket sales, but word is a lot of people are cancelling theirs going forward. I wonder how much of that is because they were terrible this year and how much is RIFC and then the new Portland team (among others) coming into the market.
As a Pittsburgher, the only pro team that has come into being has been the Riverhounds and soccer, which has steadily grown the past 20 years in interest. But it takes winning to really get attention and I think their recent success, as well as a steady rise in the interest in soccer across all levels, to get them to where they’re at now. That said, they’re no where near as popular with the older population who has money to take them to the next level.
When the Blue Jays and Raptors were born, it was and still is a huge deal around here and now the WNBA is coming to town. Very excited!
I’ve always wonder what this was like, being in the Northeast the market is already full, the territory for various teams is set, and there are no expansion teams coming in.
I have wondered about a place like Charlotte getting the Panthers. Presumably that was Falcons territory, what percentage of people in the area were Falcons fans? Did they all suddenly switch to Panthers fan who now had the Falcons as rivals? What about fans of random other teams, how quickly did they switch? Is it more a generational thing, and it requires a decade or two for younger fans to grow up and create full base of adult fans for the Panthers?
Also it creates an interesting question about new markets and what constitutes a big league city? Presumably some mid sized cities like Birmingham or Memphis are not considered big league, is there a sort of default expectation in the city and how rooting allegiances go within the territory of another bigger market team? What then happens when a city like Memphis does get one team, does that change the rooting interests for other sports as well?
The Carolinas and Tennessee were Redskins country before the Panthers and Titans. The Falcons didn’t have a large geography because they were created decades later (so less history of regional tv coverage) and didn’t have a whole lot of success.
Nashville was made up of Skins and Bengals fans mostly. Some Falcons pockets exist.
Having been born in Toronto in the 90s, the only thing close to this for me was when TFC joined MLS and played their first season in 2007. I was lucky enough to be one of the “mascots” (kids walking out with the players) for the first ever home game.
They’ve been very well supported since day one, which kind of surprises me given the overall lack of success, especially outside of the Giovinco/Altidore era. I went to a game in May for the first time in years, and was shocked at the turnout and the passion the fans still have for the team.
I’m a born-and-raised Baltimorean, with a Steelers fan dad and Browns fan mom. The Steelers had made (but lost) the Super Bowl the season before the Ravens came into existence.
I think it took a few years for the Ravens to catch on to the town. A lot of fans were still sour (and some still ARE sour) about the Colts leaving the way they did, the first Ravens/Steelers game I went to in I think 1997 was about ~80% Steeler fans. The Ravens making the Super Bowl in 2000 was kind of the turning point for a lot of the city, based on my memory and observation as a 12 year old.
A somewhat adjacent observation to the question; obviously this meant that the Browns moved TO my mom. But she was very much not happy about it. I’m fairly certain seeing that lack of enthusiasm from her is a big reason why I never flocked (pun!) to the Ravens fan base.
I wasn’t living in Baltimore when my beloved Colts rode the Mayflower truck out of town but I think I can speak for all BALTIMORE Colts fans that it was something that will always cause a gut reaction. I’ll let others remark on the acceptance of the Ravens in Charm City. I tried my hand at being a Ravens fan when they arrived, cap, t-shirt, bumper sticker, the whole bit. But it just felt wrong. I got in on the ground floor with the new Texans franchise in 2002 and eventually, I got over the Colts.
I know some folks who continued as Colts fans even with the move (and Oilers fans who did the same) but that’s something I have a hard time understanding.
I’m from Maryland and was going to school in Baltimore when the Colts left. I grew up in the DC suburbs as a Skins fan so I didn’t have the same sense of loss that others had, but I did resent John Elway for years afterwards. Personally, I’ve never cared about the Ravens, but a lot of my old friends have embraced them, which I think has a lot to do with the fact that the Ravens gave Marylanders from the DC area another option for their home team during the dark ages of the Snyder regime.
My first experience with the loss of a team was in the early 70s when the Senators moved to Texas. I wasn’t even really a baseball fan at the time, but I was seriously bummed that we lost our team. What made it worse for me was the MLB expansion that brought teams to Seattle, Toronto, Colorado, Arizona and Florida twice. How could the “national pastime” not have a team in the Nation’s Capital?? So yeah, I was pretty thrilled when the Nationals arrived, even though it came at Montreal’s expense.
As someone who grew up/lived in suburban Boston for the first 30 years of his life, I had zero experience with expansion/relocation TO my city. We had a brief dark period when the Patriots flirted with St. Louis in 1993, but that was it. I moved to Las Vegas in 2013, which was a barren wasteland for sports until the NHL arrived.
Fast forward to the summer of 2015, when the NHL announced the 31st franchise would begin play in the 17-18 season. As a lifelong Bruins fan, I figured I would take a passing interest in the team and get on the band wagon when/if they ever got good.
Unfortunately, all exciting plans for opening day, Fan Fest, and events leading up to the first season were overshadowed by the 1 October shooting in Las Vegas, the deadliest mass shooting in US history. The silver lining to this dark cloud was the players on the inaugral squad (Locally known as the “Golden Misfits”) showed up to support centers, blood donation drives, and hospitals to lend a hand however they could. Their selfless acts in the aftermath of the shooting immediately won me over, and the fact they went on their magical run to the Stanley Cup Final that spring cemented my fandom for life. The Golden Knights gave Vegas a reason to be happy, a reason to cheer, a reason to gather, and a reason to come together during the darkest chapter in our city’s history.
Six playoff appearances and one Stanley Cup later, the Golden Knights are now my primary hockey team and I maintain a passing interest in the Bruins, but given their drama of late, I feel like I made the right decision :)
The Golden Knights were probably the quickest that an expansion team felt natural. They got good so fast.
In a strange way, the Charlotte Hornets/Bobcats still feel like an expansion team to me, even after 20 years.
Diamondbacks?
While I wasn’t yet born when they were born, I think it took the Philadelphia Flyers some time to catch on…I often say winning the 2 Cups were a blessing (locked up and grew the fan base) and a curse (they seem to have been stuck in the past ever since).
When the USFL Stars camel to being, I was about excited as pre-pubescent ChrisH could get – looking back, I don’t think they were as well-received as I remember them to be…winning the championships helped, but were never going to supplant the Birds in popularity (unless of course the Eagles had left for AZ and the leagues merged?).
The AHL Phantoms were a Philly family favorite for sure, but Big Cable and Big Ed had other plans for the Spectrum land – so away they went. Sigh.
I lived in Columbus when the Bluejackets (I still hate that name) were established. We moved away shortly thereafter, so I can’t speak for all of the ways things changed, but with their arena being built, it eventually improved that section of town. I don’t know if it was related, but the minor league baseball team built a stadium downtown later, and that area is quite nice (been back once or twice).
When the NHL team arrived, there was much excitement. Columbus previously had an ECHL team (The Chill, great name) that was very popular, so folks were jacked to land an NHL team.
I love the BlueJackets name!
To each their own… since there was already a team named the Blues, and no one in Columbus would ever yell “let’s go blue” for obvious reasons, it seemed and odd choice. The Chill were hugely popular and are one of the big reasons they received an NHL team in the first place. The ECHL team left when the NHL team started, were renamed. They could have easily paid for and kept “Chill” as their name. The colors were black and silver, and their uniforms were really unique. I always thought it was a missed opportunity, particularly since an identity had already been established.
Never been to Utah – it’s top on my list of states to visit! – but I have been in communities that gained expansion/relocated/renamed teams a couple of times. In Minnesota, despite intense lingering anger about the North Stars leaving town, there was still a lot of Stars nostalgia remaining when the Wild started up. So I was surprised how quickly Minnesota hockey fans embraced the Wild almost as if the North Stars had never existed. In Washington prior to 2004, the Orioles were treated very softly as the “home” team, but for most baseball fans I knew the rooting interest was some other team, probably a team from where they grew up or went to college, first, O’s second. So when the Nats came to town in the winter of 04/05, it seemed pretty easy for most fans to drop the Orioles in favor of the Nats, who remained many folks’ second team until the mid-2010s. The consistent anti-Washington statements and business behavior of the Orioles ownership helped speed the O/s-Nats transition for attentive DC-area baseball fans.
Also in Washington, the NFL team under its former name had alienated major demographic groups of DC-area residents. In particular, the infamous and well-known racism of the team’s prior owner and management led to generations of Black NFL fans in the region embracing Washington rivals, especially the Cowboys and Steelers. I’ve encountered some anecdotal accounts of people with long family rooting interests in the Cowboys and Steelers rooting for the Commanders, if softly given how poorly the Commies played after adopting the new name. If the team holds on to make the playoffs this year, I’ll be curious to know whether many Black Washingtonians switch primary allegiance away from their fathers/grandfathers’ Cowboys/Steelers loyalty.
I know a lot of people who dumped the Washington franchise over the past 15 years or so. Some did because of the nickname, some because of the ownership, some because they just sucked so bad all the time (see also, “because of the ownership).
I’m curious to see how many people – both locally and around the country – jump on the Washington bandwagon now that Jayden Daniels is here and the old name and owner are gone.
I jumped on the bandwagon when the news broke that the yellow pants were back!
I hope a rebrand is forthcoming(WFT was unique and kinda cool – too bad it was just a placeholder)…one that keeps the colors and harkens back to the previous identity’s look.
I don’t have high hopes for a rebrand. I don’t think it’s likely to happen; it’s a traumatic thing for a team to do, in terms of fan connection and loyalty. It’s also just not the NFL way of doing business. I also don’t expect that if the team were to rebrand, the resulting name would be an improvement. I get that people don’t love Commanders. But look at modern NFL team rebrands. Ravens is the standout, and even there with an excellent name the colors and uniforms are mostly terrible. What else? Titans? Commanders is already a Titans-level name. What the team needs to do is incorporate more of the pre-WFT visual identity but without the old name and logo and it needs to win. From the jump the Commanders should have looked like the Skins but with the tiniest possible changes to reflect the changed name and logo. Old team merch should have looked like it could belong to the new team too. See how the Cleveland Guardians very carefully designed their new logos and uniforms such that there was maximum visual continuity between the old identity and the new. Even an old jersey was like 50% similar to the new. So even a fan who wanted to make a provocative statement of support for the old team name kind of couldn’t, since all the lettering on the heart side of his jersey placket was the same as the new name.
The NYC metropolitan area really embraced the Metro Stars (and then Red Bulls) and NYCFC. But I am not as big a soccer fan as I was in the 1970s. The franchise shift that mattered to me was getting the Rockies (Devils) in 1983. I took in the team on the ground floor, endured a decade of hard slog, and then reaped the joy of a Stanley Cup the season after the Rangers won theirs.
I grew up in central Ohio in the 1960s, in the Columbus TV market. Almost everyone around me was a Reds fan, the Indians had very few followers; Cincinnati was SLIGHTLY closer, but it think it was probably because the Reds had a lot more TV/radio coverage in Columbus. But in football, the Browns were all we had, plus they were really good in the 60s, so I and everyone I knew were Reds/Browns fans.
When the Bengals were created as an AFL expansion team in 1968, my sense was that most people, at least those my age, adopted them pretty quickly. Partly because they were founded by Browns icon Paul Brown, partly because Columbus media oriented more toward Cincinnati than Cleveland, so being a Reds/Bengals fan made more sense than continuing as Reds/Browns, and partly because in the late 60s the AFL was just cooler. I left in the early 70s, but my brother still lives in Columbus so I visit yearly, and my sense now is that it’s probably about 70/30 Browns/Bengals fans, but I could be off on that.
I moved to the Denver area in the late 90s, when the Rockies were only about 5 years old, and have lived here since. There are some hard core Rockies fans, but I think most people here who came from somewhere else (which is most people here) root for the Rockies as their 2nd team, while primarily supporting their original team. The Rockies draw well, considering their lack of success, but almost every opponent has significant support in the stands, and when it’s the Cubs or Cardinals or Dodgers it feels like a 50-50 split at best.
My father rued the day when the Columbus TV station would show Bengals AFL/AFC games instead of his beloved Browns. He never, ever rooted for the Bengals!
Off topic but feels right to say, congrats Utah on your new franchise. I am a Michigander who when I was 7 got to experience the 1998 nhl playoffs. When Detroit played Phoenix it was larger then life. Due to eastern to mountain standard time change, my parents allowed me to watch the first period, which I cherished. It was all larger then life between the uniforms, coyote howl goal horn, purple center ice, jeremy roenick keith tkachuck ect.. It was the first time I loved an opponent due to their aesthetic. I hope Utah builds off this heritage and gives adolescent uniwatchers’ the experience I had!
When I moved to AZ in 1990, the Cardinals had been there for 2 seasons. The lifelong AZ residents loved the Cowboys. CBS at the time was the NFC network, with NBC being the AFC network. For some reason they determined that the home team for the Phoenix market was the Cowboys for the NFC, and the Broncos for the AFC, even though LA and San Diego were much closer. Back then the Cardinals were in the NFC East along with the Cowboys. This was the only sellout AZ had, and most of the stadium was blue with Cowboys fans. It took many years, probably not until the Kurt Warner years and a new stadium, that more fans are now Cardinals fans. I never really became a full fledged Cardinals fan, mainly because of an incompetent owner.
However, when the Diamondbacks became a new expansion team, it didn’t take long for me to root for them over my childhood team, the Dodgers. I live here, and you get to know the local team much better than a team in another city.
Good answers!
I’m in Chicago and we haven’t added a Big 4 team since the mid-1960s, with the Bulls.
Born-and-raised Utah boy here—I think overall most of us have been excited for the new team. Between getting an NHL franchise and being awarded the 2034 Winter Olympics there’s been a lot of excitement for winter sports here over the last year.
Most of the hockey fans here in Utah that I know have moved here from other places—for example I have a Canadian co-worker who frequently wears Canada and Calgary Flames jerseys to the office. I also had a family in my neighborhood with roots in LA who were big LA Kings fans. Outside of that, the most experience anyone had with hockey was going to see the Grizzlies, our minor league team, or collegiate intramural hockey games. I have no idea how their allegiances will change this year, but I suspect that most Utah transplants will keep rooting for their hometown teams.
I haven’t seen a ton of UHC merch, but that’s probably down to two factors—one, everyone’s aware that Utah Hockey Club is a placeholder name and two, because of the tight turnaround there’s just not a ton of interesting merch out there right now.
It feels very similar to when Major League Soccer came to Utah with Real Salt Lake—Utah’s got a ton of passionate sports fans who want to support the team even if they don’t understand the sport. It took a few years, but once RSL had a stadium of its own they became one of the best-supported teams in MLS. Give it a few seasons, a new team name, and renovations to the Delta Center to make it more hockey-friendly and I think Utah will be one of the hardest places to play in the NHL.
The DC area’s embrace of the Nats has been interesting. There were certainly a decent share of “present at the creation” fans, while others jumped in wholeheartedly once the team started having stars like Strasburg and Harper. A lot of “let’s see if ownership can build a good team before I drop my preexisting fandom.”
There was still a fair amount of Baltimore coverage for several years from legacy media and the broadcast was terrible for the first two seasons.
Anecdotally, I think transplants who converted to the Nats are more likely to have not lived in the immediate metro areas of their old teams. Someone from further out, like say the NJ exurbs was more likely to make the Nats their #1 over someone from say, Bergen County.
I think a lot of new Washingtonians embraced the Nats because there were were transplants too.
When I was a teenager living in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, the Cincinnati Slammers of the Continental Basketball Association relocated and became the Cedar Rapids Silver Bullets. Overlooking the advertiser-based team name (one of their major financial backers was Coors Light), I could not have been more thrilled to have pro basketball in town.
Even for a starry-eyed youth like myself, though, the team’s marketing and promotional efforts were cringeworthy. Taking their cues from the Lone Ranger’s (link) association with sliver bullets (link), the team blared audio clips from the iconic Western series from the PA system during games that ranged (no pun intended) from kitschy (“Hi-Yo, Silver, Away!” after big baskets) to slightly cringe-worthy (the Lone Ranger’s trusty Native American sidekick, Tonto, grumbling, “Mmm! Ke-mo sah-bee!” after a questionable call by the officials.
The worst part of the game experience, however, was a costumed mascot named the Bullet Bear (link). For starters, it looked like something the team picked up on clearance at a mascot surplus store. It had no connection to the rest of the team’s branding. (How about a costumed white horse or something?) But worst of all, the costume was so immobile whoever was wearing it could barely move and couldn’t do anything to engage the fans other than wave its hands at shoulder height because they couldn’t be raised any higher. Let’s just say no one was going to mistake the Bullet Bear for the Phoenix Suns’ Gorilla or the Denver Nuggets’ Supermascot Rocky in terms of lively in-game entertainment. Heck, if anything the Bear was more likely to be mistaken for a lamppost!
Despite their not-quite-ready-for-primetime promotions, the Silver Bullets managed to play an up-tempo, entertaining brand of basketball and helped launch the career of New York Knicks standout John Starks in their short three-year existence. They left for eastern Washington after that, probably lured away by the promise of not having to compete against a high-profile college team just a 30-minute drive away, like the Bullets did with the Iowa Hawkeyes. Still, I think it showed that minor league sports beyond Single-A baseball could make it Eastern Iowa. It wasn’t too long before the junior hockey Cedar Rapids Roughriders moved to town, and they’ve developed a strong following that’s lasted for over two decades.
When the Quebec Nordiques moved to Denver and became the Colorado Avalanche in 1995-1996, as a Denver native who had seen the Original Colorado Rockies get sold and moved to New Jersey, I was very skeptical about NHL hockey working in Denver . . . one Stanley Cup later, the city seemed to embrace the Avs!
As the late John Madden once said, winning is a great deodorant!
It was incredible to see Atlanta quickly rally around United. MLS announced the team long before launch so they had time to form fan clubs and recruit fans. The fan base has been the pride of the league from their first season.
I was in Atlanta a few summers ago and I noticed stores carried way more merch for Atlanta United than for the Hawks.
I grew up in Phoenix and originally only had the Suns to root for.
I bounced around a few “favorite” NFL teams like any other kid before the Cardinals moved here, but I hooked on to the Cardinals fairly quickly and have never looked back (I was never a Cowboys fan, but the above poster is right, the Cowboys were huge here, especially through the mid 90s, I felt like the only Cardinals fan in high school, although there were always terrible).
The Coyotes relocated here from Winnipeg when I was in H.S. and having zero interest or care or established out of state NHL hockey team I rooted for (i enjoyed going to a few minor league Roadrunner hockey games), I immediately became a Coyotes fan. Hockey was a shiny new toy and I loved it for years. They then went through the horrific ownership situations and terrible years, and eventually I nearly stopped caring. Now that they moved to Utah, I’m kind of happy. It’s a sad loss, especially those uniforms, but I hope we can start over fresh with a new expansion team in a few years.
The Diamondbacks came as an expansion team and I immediately dropped my childhood Red Sox (Wade Boggs/Roger Clemens) affiliation. Especially since the Diamondbacks were pretty decent pretty quickly, including the 2001 WS, which is one of the highlights of my fandom to this day.
Phoenix has had a ton of new teams and also had the feeling of losing a team. Overall, the Suns are the O.G. and are definitely the City’s A#1 team and in our DNA moreso than any other.
As a Seattle area resident for 50 years.. The Kraken was met with as much anticipation and expectations as any franchise to any city. Seattle had the Seahawks within a decade of a Super Bowl win and playoff runs and Mariners just teasing the fan base with maybe a winning season and a playoff. As soon as MLS entered the city in 2009, the talk of hockey with the Kraken filled a huge void left by the Sonics leaving town in 2008. Vancouver Canucks were closet NHL but it was rare to see any C swag.
You saw Kraken hats, shirts, sweaters, emblems,etc. Everywhere. Having a brand new shiny toy at Christmas made a lot of people happy. Getting a new arena and a state of the art training facility that the young mobile generations call date nights when Kraken play, has made them a success.
Pretty sure I attended the first Mets game at the Polo Grounds in utero. My parents were Dodger and Giant fans respectively.
Imagine being a Dodger or Giant fan and then they moved west. All seven stages of grief. Walter O’Malley (today’s birthday boy) is permanently branded as one of the twentieth century’s biggest villains. Then the Mets were born and they were awful. But they weren’t the Yankees.
So years later as an DC area O’s fan we watched them being increasingly mismanaged. Here comes a NL team to our town in 2005 that were as close to being an orphan could be. That first half season was magic and we’re re branded as Nats fans. That’s how it happens, at least for me.