Championship Cities since 2000

We've now completed two decades of sports championships since 2000, so I thought it would be fun to take a look at the data. Whenever you do something like this, there are certain judgement calls that have to be made. First, I went strictly by the date that the championship was won. So even though the 2019 NFL season is going on, we already know who won the Super Bowl that was played in 2019. Second, if the city was in the name of the team, I went with that city. So the New York teams are represented as New York, not anything in New Jersey. If the team goes by a state or region, I had to make a judgement call. I assigned the Patriots to Boston as Foxborough is a suburb there. I assigned the Warriors to Oakland as that's where they played at the time.

I also decided to only count NFL, MLB, NBA and NHL. I'm sure Atlantans are upset.

Championship Cities this decade

Boston - 6
Chicago - 4
Los Angeles - 3
Oakland - 3
San Francisco - 3
Miami - 2
Pittsburgh - 2
St. Louis - 2
Washington D.C. - 2
Baltimore
Cleveland
Dallas
Denver
Green Bay
Houston
Kansas City
New Orleans
New York
Philadelphia
San Antonio
Seattle
Toronto

That's 40 titles dispersed across 22 different cities. That's pretty cool. But how many sports cities are there across the four major sports?

Wikipedia lists 49, but has bucketed Anaheim with LA, Newark with NYC, and Oakland with SF, which is a bridge too far for me. So that's 52 cities by my standards. 22/52 won a title this decade. Let's see how we do if we expand to 2000.

Championship Cities since 2000

Boston - 12
Los Angeles - 7
Chicago - 5
Pittsburgh - 5
Miami - 4
New York - 4
San Antonio - 4
St. Louis - 4
Detroit - 3
Oakland - 3
San Francisco - 3
Anaheim - 2
Baltimore - 2
Denver - 2
Newark - 2
Philadelphia - 2
Tampa - 2
Washington D.C. - 2
Cleveland
Dallas
Green Bay
Houston
Indianapolis
Kansas City
New Orleans
Phoenix
Raleigh
Seattle
Toronto

That's 79 titles (not 80 because of the NHL lockout) across 29 cities. The 7 cities we've added are Newark, Phoenix, Raleigh, Indianapolis, Detroit, Tampa and Anaheim. We're up to 29 out of 52 cities. Let's look at the cities without one, with the number of teams they have:

23 Cities without a title since 2000

Minneapolis - 4

Atlanta - 3

Cincinatti - 2

Charlotte - 2

Nashville - 2

Milwaukee - 2

Buffalo

Calgary

Columbus

Edmonton

Jacksonville

Las Vegas

Memphis

Montreal

Oklahoma City

Orlando

Ottawa

Portland

Sacramento

Salt Lake City

San Diego

Vancouver

Winnipeg

Wow. Right away Minneapolis sticks out as the only city with 4 teams not to win a title in two decades. And Atlanta with their 28-3 Super Bowl is not far behind. At least they won MLS. It's hard to give any crap to the cities with only one team. 

But for our cities with at least two teams, let's sort them by most recent title:

Atlanta - 1995
Minneapolis - 1991
Cincinatti - 1990
Milwaukee - 1971
Nashville - Never
Charlotte - Never

So if just went back one more decade we'd cover half of our multi-sport cities. Milwaukee, oof. Nashville and Charlotte only got their teams somewhat recently so it's not necessarily worse than Milwaukee. The Titans franchise won an AFL championship in 1961 as the Houston Oilers but that's definitely not a title won in Nashville.

Here's the raw data for the last two decades:

Some takeaways:
Boston is the only city to win cities in all four sports since 2000
LA is in 2nd place in titles but only from Lakers and Kings
St. Louis has titles in football, hockey and baseball, the only team with titles in three sports (and they don't even have an NFL team anymore)
Chicago is the only city to have two different teams win in the same sport (MLB)
San Antonio is by far the best single-team city
That 9-year NHL stretch where 8 titles were won by Pittsburgh, Chicago, LA
The only calendar year with multiple titles to the same city was 2004, Boston
For as many teams as they have, New York is underrepresented

Some other random takeaways:

I definitely don't think about Raleigh as a sports city

It's odd to think about the Florida Marlins and Miami Heat as representing the same city