[Le Grande Orange]

Originally Posted by stiffy

To further your point, the MLB even calculates those teams as having the same market score for CBA purposes (found on page 253 of this PDF):

Yeah, I've posted those numbers before. What's interesting is to compare the market rankings from the most recent CBA to the prior one—several cities changed position.

To reiterate, my thought is the market size is the economic rating of a locale that sets the theoretical ability of that area to financially support a club, which would then be modified by fan interest and fan loyalty. (One could also add the quality of the ballpark to the equation as well, as older parks are generally not as fan-friendly as more recently constructed parks.)

I'm sure Miami and Tampa seemed like good baseball markets on paper to MLB; it didn't work out in practice, however (at least, not beyond the first few seasons).