I've always thought that the Forbes Team Valuations were bunk. I understand the financials and how they figure them, but in a real world situation, the values have always come up short of what people were willing to pay.
Now they rank the "Worst Cities to be a Sports Fan" and San Diego comes up as the second worst city to be a sports fan. They base this on median income to cost of attending and then compare that to how well the teams perform.
What blows me away is how terrible we apparently are. Sure, the Padres have sucked this year, but we have made it to the playoffs recently. The Chargers may have disappointed in the postseason, but they basically dominate the regular season.
Well, maybe we can dig deeper. Oh, here's the error. According to Forbes, we've only had ONE playoff appearance. The Chargers have been to the playoffs plenty of times recently, and so have the Padres.
Forbes: "Oh... well our formula only counts last year..."
But we only have two pro teams. Even if you only count one year, that means that we've had HALF our teams in the postseason, which makes it really fun.
Forbes: "Yeah ummm...."
And what's this about us only having a .425 winning percentage? Sure, the Padres are terrible if you're only counting this year, but The Chargers had a .688 winning percentage! (not to mention the previous years, which you've ignored)
Forbes: "Oh... well we just added the wins in football to the wins in baseball..."
But there are only 16 games in a football season. You can't compare a football win directly to a 162 game season. The numbers will get all messed up.
Forbes: "Oh... You can't? I mean..."
The rest of the list is completely ridiculous as well. It sucks being a sports fan in Indianapolis? In Pittsburgh? In New York!?
Wouldn't you have thought that when Forbes had their interns come up with this formula, that they would've checked the results to see if they made sense? When you have those kinds of cities coming up as the worst cities to be a sports fan, and they're actually cities where sports fans thrive, then maybe the numbers need to be reworked before people start to distrust everything else that you write about sports.
Gotta give them credit though. They sure know how to write a linkbait headline. You'd just think that Forbes would have a little more class.