Despite the Braves’ last-place finish in the NL East, Atlanta was the fourth best U.S. city for baseball fans this year.
At least that’s the judgment of personal-finance website WalletHub, which had its analysts crunch the numbers on “25 key indicators of baseball fan friendliness” for 361 U.S. cities with at least one professional or college baseball team.
Atlanta's ranking, in the study headlined "2016's Best Baseball Cities," was boosted by having the second cheapest average ticket price for MLB games and the fourth most engaged MLB fans as measured by teams' Twitter followers and Facebook "likes" per capita.
Those categories helped Atlanta overcome its standing in “performance level of team.”
Seven other Georgia cities with college and/or minor-league baseball teams also were ranked: Kennesaw No. 100, Statesboro No. 147, Athens No. 199, Rome No. 226, Augusta No. 236, Macon No. 289 and Savannah No. 337.
The nation’s top three cities for baseball fans, according to the website’s metrics, were New York, St. Louis and Los Angeles, in that order. Boston ranked fifth, dragged down a bit by having the highest average MLB ticket price.
But it’s safe to say that fans in WalletHub’s 10th- and 14th-rated baseball cities — Chicago and Cleveland, respectively — have few complaints about 2016.
