The Boston Bruins show up at #88 in the FanSided 250. Is that a fair ranking?
FanSided released its annual FanSided 250, a list of the hottest 250 fandoms in the country. Basically, the list ranks anything of which you can be a fan: sports teams, media personalities, movies, TV shows, and so on. Guess which fandom showed up in the #88 spot on the list? The Boston Bruins!
That’s right, FanSided ranked the Bruins in the 88th spot. Keep in mind that FanSided 250 looks at fandoms, so in reality, all of us are in that spot!
How does FanSided rank fandoms?
FanSided uses a few different factors to rank individual fandoms: fan vote, search score, and social follows.
Fan vote and social follows are pretty self-explanatory. Search score rates a topic’s performance in online search. If people consistently go online and search about the topic, it will have a high search score.
FanSided gave the Bruins a 62.8 fan vote score and a 73.6 search score. The Bruins also had 5 million social follows.
Those are only numbers, so they don’t really tell the whole story. We need to see how the Bruins compare to other topics.
How do the Bruins compare to other NHL teams?
Like we mentioned before, FanSided 250 ranks all fandoms, not only sports fandoms. So, as you can imagine, not every NHL team made the cut. In fact, only 18 NHL teams are on the list.
Out of those 18 teams, only two teams have a higher ranking than the Bruins: the St. Louis Blues and the Toronto Maple Leafs. Both teams however, have lower fan vote and search scores than the Bruins.
What do we all think about those NHL fandom rankings?
The Maple Leafs ranking makes sense, as the Leafs are always one of the most popular NHL teams. Toronto’s a big market, and that roster has a number of young, big-name stars. The Leafs can’t beat the Bruins in the playoffs, but they can beat them in fandom.
The Blues are a whole different story. They continue to ride the wave of the Stanley Cup victory from last year. When the next FanSided 250 rankings come out, expect St. Louis to be behind Boston.
How do the Bruins compare to other New England teams?
One thing that we as Bruins fans have that Leafs and Blues fans don’t is an incredible sports market. How do the Boston Bruins compare to other teams in the New England region?
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The Red Sox come in at 92, four spots behind the Bruins. They are sixth in the MLB fandom rankings, largely because of last season’s failure to make the playoffs.
The Celtics are 12 spots ahead of the Bruins at 76. This is seventh in the NBA. There’s always some nice buzz about the Celtics, especially after some big free agent acquisitions.
No surprise, the Patriots lead all New England-based teams at #49. They are the seventh-highest NFL team. The Patriots are a model franchise in pretty much every way imaginable. Tom Brady himself is actually #19 on the list, a sign that the GOAT is the biggest sports figure in the region.
All in all, Boston Bruins fans should be happy with the #88 ranking. Not only is 88 David Pastrnak‘s number; it’s a sign that the Bruins have one of the NHL’s best fan bases.
The Bruins are fresh off a Stanley Cup Final appearance, and they are on that pace again this year. There’s a ton of buzz about the team, so it’s no surprise the Bruins have a high ranking compared to other NHL teams.