Market Potential

Cougar Football
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Here are the largest 19 MSA’s (region) in the U.S. and the population divided by the number of big 4 pro sports teams in each market:

San Diego 3,337,685
Los Angeles 2,562,082
New York 2,540,110
Houston 2,297,476
Atlanta 1,961,579
Seattle 1,933,523
Chicago 1,906,608
Dallas - Ft. Worth 1,849,916
washington DC 1,554,147
Miami 1,539,706
Philadelphia 1,524,030
Baltimore 1,404,088
Boston 1,209,133
Phoenix 1,184,318
Detroit 1,078,251
Tampa - St. Pete 1,030,466
Minneapolis - St. Paul 900,155
San Francisco - Oakland 787,893
Denver 722,057

(I added Riverside & San Bernadino to LA)

If you view the sports market as being a pie whose piece available for the college team is whatever is left over from the Pro teams, the University of Houston has great potential. The market is there and it is growing and it is not saturated completely by the pro teams.

Now this is not an exact science given that the Denver teams aren’t completely defined by the Denver MSA, they have an entire state and the Boston teams draw from Hartford, Providence etc. But the point remains that we have an unbelievable opportunity, we just have to execute the game day experience and more importantly we have to win.

Other markets that have more than 2.0 million people per professional sports team Include:
Orlando 2,509,831 (1 pro team)
San Antonio 2,473,974 (1 pro team)
Portland 2,453,168 (1 pro team)
Sacramento 2,324,824 (1 pro team) could be included in San Francisco
Las Vegas 2,204,079 (1 pro team) soon to have 2 with the Raiders
Austin 2,115,827 (many pro teams masked as college teams)

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Being in one of the top recruiting areas has done nothing to either draw teams to Houston (and it isn’t fear because even rice doesn’t have Michigan or Notre Dame beating down the doors to play here) nor get us into a better conference.

The big east was an outlier on its last breath trying to save itself.

So MSA hasn’t helped us either. We were certainly better markets, on paper, than Louisville, Utah, and Colorado.

Power and prestige is what will get us in. Prestige is going up and hopefully Tillman continues with the power and isn’t sidetracked with his new toys.

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It is growing Moncoog, there is no denying that the University of Houston brand and prestige is growing. Given the market potential the sky is the limit.

In regards to teams wanting to come here and playing us, the only teams that would want to play us are teams that 1) recruit extensively in Houston and 2) are losing recruiting battles to UH or 3) are not currently recruiting Houston but want to. If you recruit here and you aren’t losing recruits to us, why would you play us? UT, A&M, Notre Dame etc. are not losing recruiting battles to us, so why take the chance of playing us.

Teams like Tech, Kansas, Okie State are losing recruiting battles to us so they agree to play us. I could see Colorado, Nebraska and Missouri wanting to play us.

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4

The market you live in does not matter. We could be in nowereville pop 1000 but if any given Saturday we can bring in a high national tv rating we will be in. We are light years ahead of were UH was when I was on campus but there is still work to do.

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Markets matter. You can be in Petticoat Junction if that is located in a state of some size and the state identifies your school as the school to follow. We are in the state of Houston, and the state of Houston would be the 15th largest state in the US. Now the trick is being the most popular school in the state of Houston.

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