Geography of American Sports

Matt Rosenberg of Geography@About.com (who was kind enough to link to Catholicgauze) created in 2000 a series of maps detailing the geography of pro sports in the United States and Canada. By viewing the maps it is fairly easy to see spatial trends among sports.

Baseball: Major League Baseball is an old organization with roots going back to the 1800s. Because of this most of the teams (especially those who have been established for a long while) are north of the Mason-Dixon Line, north of the Ohio River, and east of the Mississippi River which was the settled area at the time. There are a few outlier teams in the south and elsewhere. A secondary core has formed in California with the oldest teams there since only 1958.

Basketball: Basketball has three cores: the northern core, the southern core from Florida stretching to Texas, and a Pacific core from Southern California to Vancouver. There is a pocket of outliers in the Interior West.

Football: The National Football League is surprisingly centered in the east. The northern core is there with a spattering of southern teams. Texas only had one team at the time which is shocking for the "capitol of football." Only ten teams are west of the Mississippi River and two of those teams are right along the river's banks.

Hockey: The National Hockey League is becoming more American and less Canadian. Only six teams remain in hockey's homeland. Some of them have moved to the South where a new core is forming. The South differs from the traditionalist Canadian core with more flashy presentations and "family-oriented" events. The Atlantic seaboard is home to many teams. California and the Great Lakes region have the small remainder of teams.

Category: Maps Sports