Boston Ranked Second-Best City for Basketball Fans

Celtic pride.

With 17 banners and 21 retired numbers hanging from the rafters of TD Garden, the Celtics are well-accustomed to greatness. And even when the C’s have an off-year, you can count one at least one college team from Massachusetts to make a run in the NCAA tournament. After all, the sport was invented in the Bay State.

So it isn’t all that surprising that Boston was named the second-best city in the U.S. for basketball fans, according to a new ranking compiled by personal finance social network WalletHub. The only city ranked better? Los Angeles, though we’ll respectfully disagree. Boston also boasted the third-most engaged fans on social media.

To compile the list, WalletHub compared nearly 300 cities using 18 key metrics, including: number of NBA and NCAA Division I teams, division titles and championships, franchise value, average NBA ticket price, NBA attendance and viewership, and the number of sports bars per 100,000 residents.

Worcester, home of Holy Cross, ranked 72nd, while Amherst ranked 114th and Lowell, 197th. Also representing New England were Smithfield, Rhode Island (94), Durham, New Hampshire (102), Storrs, Connecticut (105), Kingston, Rhode Island (118), Providence (143), Hanover, New Hampshire (153), Fairfield, Connecticut (179), Hartford (189), Orono, Maine (191), Burlington, Vermont (248), New Haven (268), Hamden, Connecticut (282), and New Britain, Connecticut (293).

You can check out WalletHub’s full ranking here.