Bulls and Bears: Florida's pro sports teams the talk of North America

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Bulls of the week

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The Miami Heat of the NBA and the NHL’s Florida Panthers are the talk of North American major league sport.

Led by the star power of Jimmy Butler and the emergent NHL star that is Matthew Tkachuk, the two teams are creating historic post-season runs that have made their fans forget about how they both literally snuck into the playoffs the last week of the regular season, qualifying as the eighth seeds in their respective eastern conferences.

While the Boston Celtics have put some real pressure on the Heat in their NBA semifinal, Tkachuk and the well-coached Panthers have been nothing but ice and steel in their unfathomable post-season; one that began with a clearly unexpected seven-game win over the top-seeded Boston Bruins, a five-game series against the Toronto Maple Leafs and a sweep of four games over the Carolina Hurricanes.

When it comes to fan engagement, the Heat are a distant second behind the Miami Dolphins in the South Florida market, while the Panthers are more often than not an afterthought.

The Sunrise, Fla.-based franchise produces bottom-five TV audiences and the seventh-lowest attendance in the NHL. Yet here they are, in their second Stanley Cup Final in franchise history — the first since 1996 — and relishing the role of “Undercats” while the top seven seeds in the East are all now golfing.

Bears of the week

Despite the current run for the ages by the Heat and the Panthers, the state of Florida is one of the most fickle sport markets in North America.

On one hand, it’s the traditional home of Major League Baseball spring training, sustaining its place for generations on the strength of the Grapefruit League pre-season.

On the other, neither the Miami Marlins nor the Tampa Bay Rays have been able to translate that into anything resembling major league attendance in their respective ballparks.

The two Florida teams are in the bottom five of MLB box office and turnstile counts, year-in, year-out. The Marlins are drawing a paltry 12,289 average per game — second worst in MLB — while the Rays are tracking 26th of 30 overall at 16,942, despite fielding the best record in baseball.

Yet the Toronto Blue Jays and the Seattle Mariners — the two expansion cousins from 1977 and last year’s American League wild card teams — are much more of a disappointment to their respective fan bases two months into the 162-game marathon that is the MLB regular season.

The two are barely treading water in their respective AL divisions. Seattle is 5 1/2 games off the pace in the AL West, taking a 26-24 record into the weekend.

Meanwhile, the Jays are worse off. They’re in a full-fledged slump that has seen them drop into the cellar in the AL East, losing eight of their last 10 to fall to 26-25, 10 1/2 games behind the Rays.

Were it not for the eighth-best attendance in MLB (35,918) and good TV ratings, it would be full-on panic mode at Rogers, owners of Canada’s lone MLB team.

Those crowds will, however, taper off in the dog days of summer if the Jays can’t find their starting pitching and stay within single digits of the division lead.

Marketing communications executive and sport business commentator Tom Mayenknecht is a principal in Emblematica Brand Builders and the host of The Sport Market on BNN Bloomberg Radio 1410 and TSN Radio nationally. Follow Mayenknecht at: twitter.com/TheSportMarket.

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