Binghamton minor league teams, fans get high ranking from Sports Business Journal

We’re No. 10!

At least, according to Street & Smith’s Sports Business Journal, which ranks minor-league cities on a biennial basis.

Binghamton earned the 10th slot out of 219 markets, according to a story published last fall. That’s up three spots from 2015 and 13 spots from 2013.

Here’s what the publication wrote about Binghamton:

“At 246,000, Binghamton is the smallest market in our top 10 — and it’s getting smaller. The market lost 1.8 percent of its population over the past five years, and the region’s 5.3 percent unemployment rate is a full point higher than the national average. However, the combined attendance among its two clubs during the past year was 334,791, a 5 percent increase over the previous season. Additionally, the ballpark (NYSEG Stadium) and arena (Floyd L. Maines Veterans Memorial Arena) each recently received a $2.5 million upgrade.

“On the baseball side, the club no longer shares its parent club’s name, after switching from the Mets to the Rumble Ponies prior to this season — a tribute to the city’s claim to be the ‘Carousel Capital of the World.’ The hockey club also experienced a name change when it switched affiliates this summer from the Ottawa Senators to the more geographically logical New Jersey Devils.”

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The Sports Business Journal used three criteria to compile its rankings: tenure, attendance and economy.

Binghamton has had professional hockey since 1973 and professional baseball since 1992. As mentioned above, the Binghamton Senators/Devils and the Binghamton Rumble Ponies had combined attendance increases of 5 percent and our area’s population contraction helped its standing. Each market’s score is partially based on total attendance of its teams, percentage of seats filled and how those figures indexed against the region’s fluctuations in unemployment, population and total personal income.

“(Binghamton’s high ranking is) a little surprising, but it’s encouraging because they’re my hometown teams,” Vestal resident Emily Rose said during a Jan. 5 Binghamton Devils game. “I want to see them being successful.”

The top nine on the list were Des Moines, Iowa; Quad Cities, Iowa/Illinois; Fort Wayne, Indiana; Charleston, South Carolina; Toledo, Ohio; Grand Rapids-Comstock, Michigan; Hershey-Harrisburg, Pennsylvania; Durham-Cary, North Carolina; and Greenville, South Carolina.

The attendance numbers were based on seasons that ended Sept. 8, 2017, which means they looked at the Rumble Ponies’ 2017 season and Binghamton Senators’ final season. Binghamton ranked last in the Eastern League, drawing 190,765 fans. The last of the Senators’ 15 seasons in Binghamton resulted in 139,323 fans passing through the turnstiles — second fewest in the American Hockey League.

But as Rumble Ponies owner John Hughes said after last season, numbers can be deceiving. Per-game attendance for the Rumble Ponies rose 26 percent last season. The Senators suffered a 3.8 percent drop from the previous season.

“People always say you’re last in attendance,” Hughes said. “This market is really the size of your typical Single-A market. We’re very fortunate to have Double-A baseball for a community the size of a Single-A market. If this was the South Atlantic League, we’d be in the middle of the pack or near the top.

“It’s really frustrating when people say (the Rumble Ponies are last in attendance) because I want people to compare apples to apples. … When they say last in attendance, it implies we’re losing. I think we’re winning.”

SBJ only considered Binghamton’s two minor-league teams. It did not look at the $2 million Dick’s Sporting Goods Open, a PGA Tour Champions event in Endicott, the $75,000 Levene, Gouldin & Thompson Tennis Challenger, the newly-formed Binghamton Bulldogs of the American Basketball Association or Binghamton University’s Division I sports programs.

“For a little community like this, we have a Double-A baseball team, the Rumble Ponies, we have the New Jersey Devils’ Triple-A team, the Devils — I think that’s impressive,” said Tom Mitchell, B-Devils’ Executive Vice President of Operations. “We have Binghamton University. In my opinion, this is great therapy on game night.”

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