BP: Lies, Damned Lies: Defining a Market, pt. 1

[haltz]

This is a pretty long article, and I'm not sure how much discussion it will spur, but the results are interesting and Cardinals-friendly so I figured it might deserve mention. Here's the gist of it:

This past weekend, however, I had a bright idea. Actually, it wasn’t such a bright idea, because I wound up spending the better part of three days on it. Forget about how we define metropolitan areas and how we dole out secondary markets--let’s try and account for the MLB affiliation of every person in the country!
...
For one thing, we need some notion of a team’s sphere of influence. If you viewed things strictly in terms of geography, you’d find that the Cubs and the White Sox have nearly identical market sizes, when in fact the Cubs have quite a bit more influence, particularly once you get outside of Chicago proper and into suburbs and cornfields. A team’s sphere of influence can penetrate outward much farther if it has a strong brand.

There is no one perfect way to define the strength of a team’s brand, so what I did instead was to combine six or seven imperfect metrics in the hopes of coming up with a tasty sausage. In particular, the measures that I looked at were as follows:

1. The ranking of each team in the ESPN Ultimate Standings in two categories that are closely associated with brand: perception of ownership and fan relations. Data was averaged over the past five years of the ESPN survey.
2. Baseball avidity in each area, as measured by a 2002 Scarborough Research study.
3. The number of "hits" for each team using Google Blogsearch. Alternate team names ("Oakland A’s," "Oakland Athletics") were accounted for.
4. The number of regular-season wins for each team since 1901, provided continuous tenure in its current market. The Giants, for example, start counting upward from when they arrived in San Francisco, and do not get credit for what they did in New York.
5. The amount of postseason success for each team, again provided continuous tenure in its market. One point was given for each playoff appearance, and a two-point bonus for each World Series championship.
6. The value of the brand intangible for each club, as estimated by Forbes.
7. The Forbes data again, this time transformed to a logarithmic scale.

As you can see, I’m trying to house a lot of different definitions of brand under one roof. A team’s "likability" plays a role, as reflected in the ESPN survey, but so too does its history of success, the amount of buzz that it generates in media circles, and so forth. The Forbes data is intentionally given double weight because it’s probably the most reliable data among our metrics in this exercise.

Each team was assigned a rating in each category, ranging from 50 for the lowest team to 100 for the highest team, with the rest of the data linearly extrapolated from there. The rating across each of the seven categories was then averaged to produce the final result.

Code: Select all

Influence Ratings


Team                     Absolute Score      Relative Score
 1. New York Yankees         94.8                 1.44
 2. St. Louis Cardinals      82.6                 1.26
 3. Boston Red Sox           80.1                 1.22
 4. Chicago Cubs             72.8                 1.11
 5. New York Mets            72.2                 1.10
 6. Cleveland Indians        71.7                 1.09
 7. Atlanta Braves           70.3                 1.07
 8. Chicago White Sox        68.2                 1.04
 9. Houston Astros           67.9                 1.03
10. Detroit Tigers           67.1                 1.02
11. Los Angeles Angels       67.0                 1.02
12. San Francisco Giants     66.6                 1.01
13. Los Angeles Dodgers      66.3                 1.01
14. Philadelphia Phillies    66.2                 1.01
15. Seattle Mariners         65.1                 0.99
16. San Diego Padres         64.3                 0.98
17. Cincinnati Reds          63.7                 0.97
18. Baltimore Orioles        63.5                 0.97
19. Pittsburgh Pirates       62.0                 0.94
20. Texas Rangers            61.8                 0.94
21. Oakland A's              61.5                 0.94
22. Arizona Diamondbacks     61.4                 0.93
23. Minnesota Twins          59.4                 0.90
24. Toronto Blue Jays        59.2                 0.90
25. Washington Nationals     58.7                 0.89
26. Milwaukee Brewers        57.7                 0.88
27. Florida Marlins          56.4                 0.86
28. Colorado Rockies         56.3                 0.86
29. Kansas City Royals       55.3                 0.84
30. Tampa Bay Devil Rays     52.2                 0.79

You’ll see two sets of ratings reflected in the chart. The first is the “raw” rating on a 50-100 scale, while the second is the score relative to the league average, which is the number that we’re going to use to tweak our market-size estimates. We could probably devote a column or two to the accuracy or lack thereof of these brand ratings--I think they seem pretty darn good--but we have a lot of other things to look at, so let’s move forward.

Rest of the article

[stretch]

I'm surprised the Dodgers are ranked that low and that the Angels are actually ranked higher than them.

[thrill]

Let's raise that payroll, owners!

[Popeye_Card]

I'm most surprised by the Indians. But I have a hunch that it might be because the Google search brought up a lot of hits based on the controversial mascot.

Also, I'm guessing that the Cubs and Red Sox would be ahead of the Cards if not for their relative futility for championships.

I do question the validity of such a study that doesn't place the Dodgers in the top 10.

--P--

[JL21]

The Mets are the one that surprise me.

[jim]

The Mets are the one that surprise me.

Them and the White Sox for me.