For those who bleed Black and Gold, the idea that Pittsburgh is the best city for football fans is just about the least shocking notion ever.
But WalletHub, a personal financial website, went ahead and just made it official — again.
For the fourth year in a row, Pittsburgh stood above all other cities as the single best place for a gridiron lover to be.
In their 2022 Best & Worst Cities for Football Fans, pinned to Sunday’s Super Bowl LVI, WalletHub broke 245 U.S. spots into three categories — large, midsize and small. A large city is one with more than 300,000 residents. For midsize cities, it’s from 100,000 to 300,000 residents and small is less than 100,000.
The site looked at 21 metrics to rank the cities, which each have at least one college or professional football team. They considered things such as number of teams, average ticket prices and fan friendliness. Each entry was graded on a 100-point scale, with 100 being the most favorable conditions for football fans.
Pittsburgh scored a 62.58, landing at No. 1 among all pro-team cities and No. 7 among all college-team cities.
Dallas landed in the No. 2 spot with a 56.06 score. With 55.57 points, Green Bay came in third. Rounding out the top 10 are Boston, Los Angeles, New York, Miami, New Orleans, Cincinnati and Indianapolis.
Browns fans are left to be content in the 26th ranked city, while Ravens fans are in the 16th.
When broken down into the three categories, Pittsburgh was the top large city, with Green Bay as the top midsize city and Tuscaloosa, Ala., as the top small city.
The site’s research found that 62% of Americans consider themselves either a fan or “somewhat” of a fan of professional football, and 54% say the same for college football.
The worst place to be if you are a football fan? St. George, Utah.
WalletHub said the data used to create the ranking were collected from the U.S. Census Bureau, Team Marketing Report, ESPN, NCAA, Pro Football Hall of Fame, Sports Reference, Forbes, Minute Media, each team’s website and social media accounts.
