Effect of Thunder on Oklahoma City

How has population changed in cities before vs. after a NBA team was moved to there?

How has Human-Environment Interaction affected cities where a team is located?

How has the money generated from this association benefitted the cities?

I am researching the effects of an NBA franchise on a city. How the money raised by the association is put to use outside of their own business? Where the money comes from and how much of it is put back into the city? Whether or not a teams success has anything to do with how rich the franchise is? Essentially, how a franchise can change a cities populous, money and environment. I found it most convenient to focus on Oklahoma City because they are the most recent franchise to have moved.

This topic affiliates with Human Environment Interaction as well as location and movement. The way that humans follow entertainment from location to location is fascinating. Carving the landscape as they see best fit to create the biggest attraction possible. Populations have the possibility to change by tens of thousands following sports teams.

Along with the effect that this leaves on the environment, it is just an overall cool topic to spend my time with. This is one of the biggest businesses currently and it is continuing to grow. Basketball has always been my favorite sport and I have always wanted to delve deeper into my understanding of the NBA. My favorite NBA team is the OKC Thunder as well so that was the deciding factor in me choosing this topic.

Although the arrival of Kevin Durant came with a boom, his departure is not as drastic as some see it as. He brought fame to the city and the city will continue to thrive without him. He did a lot for the city and now the city is onto bigger and better things, more job opportunities and a growing city. With the fame brought to the city, the money has come along with that as well. There have been several new buildings built around the city with more than $1 billion being thrown into new city renovations. Since the relocation of this franchise (2008), Oklahoma City is in the top 20 for job growth and even the top 5 for growth as a whole.

This article helped to show me that the thriving of this city is not reliant on the success of the basketball team. Although the team was one of the best for a while, it is evident now with a struggling team that the city will continue to grow and thrive without a championship caliber team.

Over the course of the last thirty years, Oklahoma City has been growing. But, since the addition of a high caliber NBA franchise, the city has seen tremendous growth. Along with the franchise, more job opportunities are available than ever. Outside of the NBA, this city is in the midst of a boom and have been for the last 50 years. The NBA just casually covers up all of the advancements that have been happening in Oklahoma for decades now. Over the last ten years the population has went up by nearly 100,000 people. The continuing development of this city is expected until the metropolitan area reaches 1.5 million people

This article struck me with importance because it gave actual numbers for population boosts. This article also poked at previous development in the city which I believe is very important. Many sites completely credit the boom in OKC to the Thunder franchise when they merely came in at a good time. This has been a project long in the works and it is not right for a big corporation to take credit for work they did not do.

There is pretty much no reason for Oklahoma City to have a basketball team. It is not a huge town and there is not a huge media market in the area. Yet, the team was purchased and moved here by Clayton Bennett. Bennett had a plan though and wanted this team to be where he lived, in the beautiful city of Oklahoma.

I really like this article because it shows me that there is much more being thought about when considering a professional team in the area than goes through my head. Along with customer satisfaction comes TV subscriptions, memorabilia prices, target market and many other factors that are simply over my head.

When tragedy struck New Orleans in 2005, Oklahoma City acted as a safe place for their NBA team. Hurricane Katrina had just hit and the city was in no form to be hosting NBA games. Instead, the franchise played games in Chesapeake Energy Arena for a chunk of the season. These games played in Oklahoma City opened the eyes of investors. The team did not end up doing all that good but people were impressed by the ticket sales. The team ended up at 11th in sellout tickets that year while being far out of the playoff race. The ticket sales and attendance levels led to the Seattle Supersonics becoming interested in Oklahoma City. Within months, people with hundreds of millions of dollars were in the works of establishing a franchise in Oklahoma City.

I like this article a lot because it provided me information that I never knew about. I was too young to experience Hurricane Katrina and thus was unaware that the New Orleans Hornets were moved to OKC for a large sum of the season. From this knowledge, I was able to connect more dots as to why Oklahoma City was such a target city. Investors were not following there gut but rather were trusting what they had just watched unfold for months prior.

With the research I have conducted, some conclusions have been drawn. First of all, the franchise for Oklahoma City has brought many different benefits. Primarily, the money flow has been very helpful for the city. More money than ever is flowing through giving opportunity to the city to expand and allow more people to move there.

Human-environment interaction is slowly beginning to shape the landscape in Oklahoma. Chesapeake Energy Arena has been put up downtown for a plausible sum of money. Along with this, several other new buildings have been thrown up, providing incentive to move there. The town is becoming more attractive and more people are beginning to move there. It will not be long before millions of dollars are put into building homes instead of state of the art buildings. Human-environment interaction is shaping this typically boring Midwest town into an attractive location for people to move.

This topic relates to the Western World because it exemplifies the power of entertainment. People who pour their money into something such as this do not think about the money, but rather the experience they are getting. Entertainment is what attracts people, not money or location. The Western World has mastered this in using a variety of sports and shows to keep people simulated. Whether it be NHL, NBA, NFL, MLB, FOX news, CNN news, people love to be simulated by something that entices them. So, the people of the west are provided with what they want.

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Images (Cited in order):

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https://www.foxsports.com/nba/gallery/nba-teams-worth-value-forbes-valuation-021517 (used to gather NBA $$ data)

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