Who are the best (and worst) fans in the NFL? New study has the answers

[sandwedge]

(06-21-2017, 11:02 PM)Nately120 Wrote: I just gave a cursory glance, but this seems more like a measure of each team's equity as a brand rather than the mettle of the fans themselves.  The Bengals have the following things going against them:

smaller market
new-ish team/no history of success to fall back on
an owner who doesn't build brand equity

The Bengals have been either disappointing or an outright on or off the field joke for most of their existence.  The Bengals are also an unattractive option for a "secondary team" as well.  I've seen a lot of Steelers/Seahawks or Packers/Giants fans in my day because they like the idea of having a secondary team in the other conference that they feel shares their toughness and attitude (aka, bandwagon and winning).

Fair or foul, stuff like that kills our ability to attract casual or out-of-market fans which is a big part of what people decide "good fandom" to be.  I personally understand this because I'm from Pittsburgh and I'm a Celtics fan (no local NBA team, and it was the 80s and many of my friends who started watching in the 90s are Bulls fans), Cubs fan (they stunk like the Pirates but did so in a more lovable way and they didn't get rid of players the second you started to like them) a Bengals fan (it was the 80s and I wanted to be different and I picked the team that was beating the local favorites).  

The Bengals look very much like any other business that is built by a first generation and then middlingly maintained or sold by subsequent ones.  If the Bengals were a widget-producing factory founded by Paul Brown in Cincinnati, Mike Brown would have moved the plant to Mexico by now and/or sold it in some sort of merger.

Bingo, the front office has failed to make the Bengals a brand. Many of the loyal fans are fans because they had a family member pass that on to them. You don't find to many true fans that just wake up one day and say, "I'm going to be a Bengals fan". I became a fan in the early 70's because I was a Reds fan. I didn't even know Cincinnati had a football team, all I knew was baseball.