Menu
Download the app

SBJ subscribers – Enhance your experience with the revamped iOS app

Research and Ratings

Top 10 Minor League Markets: No. 2 Toledo, Ohio

TEAMS (FIRST SEASON): International League Toledo Mud Hens (1965), ECHL Toledo Walleye (2009)

VENUES (YEAR OPENED): Fifth Third Field (2002), Huntington Center (2009)

The two teams in the market that ranked No. 1 in our study in 2013 drew more than 842,000 fans combined in their most recently completed seasons, a record sum, despite the area’s population decline. The total was driven by the ECHL Walleye, whose postseason run to a league championship added 65,000 fans to their attendance count. The 6-year-old ECHL franchise drew 296,739 fans for its 2014-15 season (including playoffs), the most for a hockey franchise in a market that has hosted professional hockey almost continuously since 1947. That strength helped make up for the fact that, on the baseball side in Toledo, the Mud Hens’ 2014 attendance (545,265) was the team’s lowest in a decade and 4 percent below its average season total since Fifth Third Field opened in 2002. Still, fans filled more than 76 percent of the ballpark’s seats over the past five seasons, a rate higher than that of any other baseball team in the survey’s top 10.

The Mud Hens also appeared on Minor League Baseball’s annual list of top-selling merchandise during all five of the seasons measured for this year’s study, extending that streak to 18 consecutive seasons, the longest of any baseball club in the top 10.

Those trends have occurred in a market that has seen a 14 percent increase in its amount of total personal income from 2010 to 2014, but its population has dropped 0.4 percent over that time and is down 10 percent from the early 1970s.

— David Broughton

SBJ Morning Buzzcast: March 25, 2024

NFL meeting preview; MLB's opening week ad effort and remembering Peter Angelos.

Big Get Jay Wright, March Madness is upon us and ESPN locks up CFP

On this week’s pod, our Big Get is CBS Sports college basketball analyst Jay Wright. The NCAA Championship-winning coach shares his insight with SBJ’s Austin Karp on key hoops issues and why being well dressed is an important part of his success. Also on the show, Poynter Institute senior writer Tom Jones shares who he has up and who is down in sports media. Later, SBJ’s Ben Portnoy talks the latest on ESPN’s CFP extension and who CBS, TNT Sports and ESPN need to make deep runs in the men’s and women's NCAA basketball tournaments.

SBJ I Factor: Nana-Yaw Asamoah

SBJ I Factor features an interview with AMB Sports and Entertainment Chief Commercial Office Nana-Yaw Asamoah. Asamoah, who moved over to AMBSE last year after 14 years at the NFL, talks with SBJ’s Ben Fischer about how his role model parents and older sisters pushed him to shrive, how the power of lifelong learning fuels successful people, and why AMBSE was an opportunity he could not pass up. Asamoah is 2021 SBJ Forty Under 40 honoree. SBJ I Factor is a monthly podcast offering interviews with sports executives who have been recipients of one of the magazine’s awards.

Shareable URL copied to clipboard!

https://www.sportsbusinessjournal.com/Journal/Issues/2015/08/17/Research-and-Ratings/Minors-Toledo.aspx

Sorry, something went wrong with the copy but here is the link for you.

https://www.sportsbusinessjournal.com/Journal/Issues/2015/08/17/Research-and-Ratings/Minors-Toledo.aspx

CLOSE