Welcome to the analytics tool that will tell you just how joyful or miserable your sports fandom has been in your lifetime. Simply select your date range, filter for the sports you follow, and select your city or your individual teams. In case you were wondering, this project is the result of an analytics pro indulging his sadistic curiosity about how his 39 years of Baltimore Orioles, Washington Wizards, Washington Redskins/Commanders, and Washington Capitals fandom could be much worse. Spoiler alert: it really couldn’t be much worse.
We know that geography is the number one reason why people end up rooting for a sports team, so these are fan bases built from every team city across the NFL, NBA, MLB, and NHL. Each metro area has possible team combinations built from the teams that play within 60 miles. For instance, people in or around Maryland could feasibly root for Baltimore teams, for D.C. teams, or a combination of both. All such combinations can be found in the rankings. If your teams aren’t all from the same region, click the “Build your own” tab above.
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So you’re one of those people who doesn’t root for the hometown team for some reason, huh? Go ahead and select your rooting interests below, and see how it compares with every possible combination of rooting interests from the same leagues over the same span, from 100 misery (the cruelest fandom combination possible) to 100 joy (sports are fun, actually).
Each season is worth up to 9 points. A team earns up to 1 point for its regular-season record, scaled by where it finished in its league: 0 for the worst record, 1 for the best. Using league finish, not wins, lets a 17-game NFL season stand beside a 162-game baseball season. It then earns 1 point for making the playoffs, 1 for reaching the final four (the LCS, conference finals or conference championship game), 1 for reaching the final and 5 for winning the title. A season's misery is how far it fell short of 9.
A team's score is the average of its seasons in the time frame. A fan base's score is the average of its teams. A season with no team to follow counts as that league's average season that year. This covers the years before a franchise existed, after it left, or when a city had no local team. It keeps a short stint from outweighing decades with another team.
The number you see is a rank, not a raw score. It runs from 100 misery to 100 joy, with 0 in the middle. Local fandoms are ranked against one another: the most miserable metro-based fan base is 100 misery and the most joyful is 100 joy. Each is placed by where it falls among every possible combination of the same sports, so a fan base missing a sport is still judged fairly. Build your own ranks your teams against every possible combination of qualified teams, from the cruelest (100 misery) to the luckiest (100 joy). It also shows where you would land among the metro-based fan bases. Each team card ranks one team within its league.
Turn a sport off and only the sports you keep are compared. A baseball-and-hockey fan is ranked against every MLB and NHL pair; a one-sport fan, against that league's teams. Every combination has one team per league, so a league that added or cut playoff spots moves every combination equally.
If you switched teams, add a team change to that sport. Pick the team and the year you started following it, or choose "No team" for seasons you sat out. Each team counts only for its own years, and seasons with no team count as average. A team you pick brings its whole franchise history: the Grizzlies count both their Vancouver and Memphis years. The Vancouver fan base counts only the six seasons the team played there.
Teams that played fewer than half the seasons in the time frame, mostly expansion teams, still get a score. They get no league rank, and they are left out of the comparison with every possible combination.
A local fan base takes on a new team only if it is a true successor: in the same city, and never playing alongside the team it replaces. Houston's NFL line is the Oilers through 1996, average seasons from 1997 to 2001, then the Texans. Baltimore's is the Colts through 1983, then average seasons until the Ravens arrive in 1996. It never includes Washington's team, which was already there as a rival. Quebec's NHL line turns average when the Nordiques leave. A fan base with no team at all in one of your sports during the time frame is left out. Seattle, for example, drops out of 1991–2000 when the NHL is on. A city that never had a team in a sport follows the one team that was closest to it on average over the span, measured from wherever that team played each season. Salt Lake City follows the Broncos, not the Raiders, who only reached nearby Las Vegas in 2020.
The 2004-05 NHL lockout season is skipped. MLB's 1994 season, cut short by a strike, counts as a missed postseason for every team. NBA teams that lose in the play-in count as missing the playoffs.
The data covers 50 seasons, 1976 to 2025. It begins with the ABA–NBA merger, the NFL's growth to 28 teams and the NHL's modern four-round playoffs. A year means the season's starting year, so 2025 is the 2025-26 NBA and NHL season. Teams follow the franchise, not the city: the Nationals include the Expos, the Thunder include Seattle and the Colts include Baltimore. Logos are each franchise's current logo. "Local" means within 60 miles of a team's stadium or arena; it is not a survey of real fans.