By One Metric, Bucs Most Popular Team in Tampa Bay; Pinellas Supporting Rays Better Than Hillsborough

Since the Rays won't release numbers on where their ticket holders are coming from (except when its convenient for them), I took a look at another metric: where fans were buying specialty license plates.

And while the Bucs and Bolts enjoy considerably more popularity in Hillsborough County than anywhere else in the state, there are more Tampa Bay Rays specialty tags in Pinellas than Hillsborough, despite the coastal county's smaller population (about 30% smaller).

Now this may not come as a surprise to many, but the whole "Pinellas hasn't supported that team" argument really is moot - if Pinellas isn't "properly" supporting the Rays, neither is Hillsborough.

Other fun Florida license plate facts (see the full stats on the WTSP.com story):

Most popular pro teams in Florida:

MIAMI HEAT	37361
TAMPA BAY BUCCANEERS	31503
MIAMI DOLPHINS	16854
JACKSONVILLE JAGUARS	8918
TAMPA BAY LIGHTNING	7279
TAMPA BAY RAYS	5007
NASCAR	3422
ORLANDO MAGIC	3111
MIAMI MARLINS	2906
FLORIDA PANTHERS	2061

 

Most popular colleges in Florida:

UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA	97209
FLORIDA STATE UNIVERSITY	73265
UNIVERSITY OF MIAMI	25664
UNIVERSITY OF CENTRAL FLORIDA	18220
FLORIDA A & M UNIVERSITY	16190
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTH FLORIDA	14907
FLORIDA ATLANTIC UNIVERSITY	2424
UNIVERSITY OF NORTH FLORIDA	1736
FLORIDA GULF COAST UNIVERSITY	1666
ROLLINS COLLEGE	1579

 

Where Tampa Bay Rays plates are most popular:

PINELLAS	1527
HILLSBOROUGH	1387
PASCO	548
MANATEE	289
POLK	183
SARASOTA	181
HERNANDO	104

 

Where Tampa Bay Buccaneers plates are most popular:

HILLSBOROUGH	9887
PINELLAS	5386
PASCO	2738
POLK	1216
MANATEE	1179
MIAMI-DADE	1125
ORANGE	1081
SARASOTA	927
HERNANDO	643

 

Where Tampa Bay Lightning plates are most popular:

HILLSBOROUGH	2606
PINELLAS	1569
PASCO	928
MANATEE	326
POLK	289
SARASOTA	258
HERNANDO	229

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FSU Sold Fewer Bowl Tickets Than USF

TAMPA BAY, Florida – A post-bowl report by Florida State University reveals the Seminoles’ disappointing football season resulted in the school having to “buy out” the overwhelming majority of tickets it was tasked with selling ahead of its Independence Bowl appearance.
According to the FSU report, the school sold just 1,132 of the 6,000-plus tickets it was required to sell to the Dec. 27 game in Memphis – fewer than the disappointing ticket totals the University of South Florida sold to the Birmingham Bowl, held four days earlier. 

The Seminoles won the Independence Bowl, 42-13, over Southern Miss, to cap off a 7-6 year, FSU’s 41st consecutive winning season.

FSU’s total allotment for the game was 6,064 tickets, so the school gave 2,126 tickets away to local charities and members of the armed forces; 2,438 tickets went unused; and the remaining 400 or so were used by the university.
Schools like FSU typically receive millions from their conferences for simply appearing in a bowl game, and the conference sometimes helps pay for unsold tickets.  But poor showings at a bowl box office, where ticket guarantees can sometimes climb north of 10,000 tickets, can still eat away at hundreds of thousands of dollars of revenue a school would have otherwise been able to put back into its programs.

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No, the Outback Bowl Did Not Rain $55 Million on Tampa Bay

More bogus/inflates economic impact claims. 55,000 people are not traveling to Tampa for the Outback Bowl, and a family of four does not average $4,000 spent when they do. https://t.co/1i5NkSpLsp

— Noah Pransky - WTSP (@noahpransky) December 31, 2017

Happy New Year, everyone 🎉 RT @RLenziCMG: A few seats still available at Raymond James Stadium ... pic.twitter.com/rYP50sON8l

— Empty Seats Galore (@EmptySeatsPics) January 1, 2018

How do we know 55,000 people didn't spend $1,000 each visiting Tampa this week for the Outback Bowl? Announced crowd of 45,687 may be a clue. https://t.co/915CSKzl79

— Noah Pransky - WTSP (@noahpransky) January 1, 2018

A more conservative estimate pegs the Outback Bowl economic impact at $30 million a year. But that figure came from the non-economist "economist" Mark Bonn, who I previously exposed for using bogus and inflated numbers.

Real economists suggested the impact is closer to 1/10 of Bonn's estimates. But that's not the kind of number that gets tax dollars flowing to your private bowl game and funding the $993,000 salary of said bowl game's CEO.

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