Congrats, Pittsburgh: You are the third best city for hockey fans.
That’s according to a new study by WalletHub.
Although, with the Penguins having been swept in the first round of the Stanley Cup Playoffs — can you remember back that far? — the accolade just kinda rings hollow, doesn’t it?
But, we’ll take it, won’t we?
The study looked at 21 relative metrics with 73 U.S. cities across two main categories — NHL and NCAA. All of the cities on the list have at least one college or NHL team. Then, they factored in things like team records, championships won, hall of fame coaches, fan engagement, stadium capacity, and ticket prices — among other things.
Pittsburgh tied for first when it comes fan engagement, which was calculated by adding the number of Twitter followers to the number of Facebook “Likes” per capita. The city Pittsburgh tied with? Sunrise, Fla. The study also found Pittsburgh has the fifth lowest minimum season ticket price for an NCAA game.
Fittingly, Boston came in as the top city for hockey fans, with their Stanley Cup Finals opponent city, St. Louis, coming in at 11. St. Louis is the oldest NHL city to have never won the Stanley Cup, while Boston’s teams have won six times.
Among other cities of note, Philadelphia showed up at 14, Columbus at 21, State College at 40, and Erie at 69. Cleveland, without either an NHL or NCAA team, didn’t make the list.
As for sources, WalletHub collected data from the U.S. Census Bureau, ESPN, NCAA.org, NHL.com, U.S. College Hockey Online, Forbes, TicketIQ, Ranker.com, U.S. Hockey Hall of Fame and each team’s website.
Maybe we weren’t tops here, but at least Pittsburgh can still lay claim to being the best city for football fans.
