Miami Is 2022's Sixth-Best US Sports City, Declares WalletHub

We're number 6 in the US! Tampa (26), Orlando (34), and Tallahassee (48) can eat our dust.

November 21, 2022

Miami is too a great sports town! (Exhibit A) Eric Espada/Getty Images

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Miami is often lauded for being home to some of America's finest things. Sunshine, beaches, beautiful people, and DJ Khaled are just a few selling points that come to mind.

On the other hand, being one of the best sports towns in America is, unfortunately, not on the list of positive traits most associated with Miami. Until now.

Thanks to a new study done by WalletHub that looked at sports data from 392 cities, Miami's rep as a sports town appears to be getting a bit of a makeover. WalletHub considered small and large cities, taking into account the five largest sports in the US: football, basketball, baseball, hockey, and soccer.

The number crunchers deemed Miami America's sixth-best large sports city, trailing only Los Angeles, Boston, New York, Pittsburgh, and Dallas.

Like DJ Khaled always says Miami, we da sixth-best!

Source: WalletHub

In order to determine the best sports cities, WalletHub combined the results from its previous rankings, then took each sports category and assigned a weight corresponding with the total percentage of adults in the US who claim to follow that particular sport, according to data from Gallup. Each sports category was then ranked on a 100-point scale, with a score of 100 representing the most favorable conditions for sports fans.

Unsurprisingly, Miami's elite ranking was buoyed by high marks in basketball (sixth best) and football (seventh best). WalletHub pegged Miami as the 14th-best soccer city and 26th-best large baseball city.
Miami wasn't the only big Florida city to make it toward the top of WalletHub's Best Sports Cities list. Tampa (26), Orlando (34), and Tallahassee (48) also made the top 50.

So there you have it. The next time you find someone ignorantly claiming on Twitter that Miami is a terrible sports town, you link them back to this article and say the data scientists at WalletHub beg to differ.

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Ryan Yousefi, a sports journalist and MBA holder in business healthcare management, has been a dedicated weekly contributor to the Miami New Times since 2013. Beyond his sports journalism career, he's held leadership roles in web3 gaming companies. He enjoys southeast Asia travel, pho, and whiskey, but most of all, being Lincoln's dad.

Contact: Ryan Yousefi

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