Turns out when those in the organization say Mavs fans are the best in the league, they’re not exaggerating. Science has now proven it.
Well, kind of.
According to a study conducted for the Harvard Sophomore Economics Tutorial, Mavericks fans are the most loyal in the NBA. Click the link to read the full article on the Harvard Sports Analytics Collective’s site.
To measure what could be considered a subjective quality, Nicholas Heath examined how stadium attendance responded to team performance. “In theory, a perfectly loyal fanbase’s attendance remains relatively constant from year to year regardless of the team’s performance,” Heath writes. “More colloquially, fans will stick with their team ‘through thick and thin.’ Conversely, disloyal, ‘fair-weather’ fans will show up to games only when their team is doing well and disappear when their team is underperforming.”
In other words, if fans ever stopped coming to games while the team underachieved, they would fall in the rankings. Here are the results:
The Mavs had the lowest correlation of all 30 NBA teams between wins and attendance. This shouldn’t exactly be news to fans of the team with the longest sellout streak in pro sports. Here’s a chart showing the Mavs’ win percentage vs. average stadium capacity by season.
Essentially, American Airlines Center has always been packed, even during seasons when Dallas hasn’t won 50+ games.
Heath admits the study isn’t all-encompassing because there are several other ways to quantify loyalty, including through TV ratings, merchandise sales, and engagement with other media. Additionally, factors like city size, median income, stadium location, and star appeal must be taken into consideration, and it’s difficult to do that by measuring ticket sales alone.
However, the fact remains that Mavs fans have generally turned out in droves for years to support their team regardless of position in the standings, and they’ve done it more consistently than fan bases of any other team. So, at least as it relates to this one study, MFFLs are the best fans in the NBA.
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