The Virginian-Pilot
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I don't think Virginia Beach is going to get an NBA team anytime soon, and here's why: from parts of the coastal city, it's more than 30 minutes to the nearest Apple store.
Apple is the world's most valuable company, worth more than $620 billion. Executives follow a careful strategy in selecting the best spots for its pristine and shiny retail shops.
The care they take in that part of the business is standard practice. Leaders at Ikea follow a similar philosophy. So do Crate & Barrel, the furniture and housewares chain, and Anthropologie, a women's clothing and home accessories store, and Brooks Brothers, a men's clothing store, and dozens of others of high-end retailers.
"They all have key demographics they're looking for," said H. Blount Hunter, a Norfolk-based retail consultant who specializes in retail real estate development.
Individually, each company has its own rubric for success in a given market, but collectively the choices these companies make about new stores build a narrative about an area, including Hampton Roads. The shopping opportunities display behaviors about the people who live in each market and how they can afford to spend money.
For the past two weeks, everyone who's ever laced up a pair of high-tops has speculated about an NBA team moving to Virginia Beach. It's an exciting possibility, one that would give a region with an identity crisis instant national recognition.
But before you tattoo a VB Kings logo on your calf, humor me for a minute and consider how shopping in this area compares to other NBA markets.
I put together a spreadsheet of stores from five sought-after chains within a 50-mile radius of every NBA arena. I found that the average NBA market has 1.25 Ikeas, three Crate & Barrels, 3.5 Brooks Brothers stores, almost five Anthropologies and at least five Apple retail stores.
If you're afraid the major media markets like Los Angeles, New York and Chicago skew the data toward big cities, we can deal with the median, too. The median NBA market has one Ikea, one Crate & Barrel, two Brooks Brothers, three Anthropologies and 4.5 Apple Retail Stores.
Compare that to Hampton Roads: zero Ikeas, zero Crate & Barrels, one Brooks Brothers, zero Anthropologies and one Apple Retail store.
Those numbers create, in basketball lingo, a matchup problem. Hampton Roads doesn't look like other NBA markets. Hampton Roads shoppers don't have the same choices as people in other NBA markets. Why? By their actions, high-end retailers have said they don't think we have the money.
And if we don't have the money for high-end shopping, how are we going to afford pricey NBA tickets and foam fingers? Most likely, we won't.
That is not to say the demographics here are impossible for an NBA market, just as it's not impossible for the Cleveland Cavaliers to beat the Miami Heat on any given night. But, to me, the chances for sustained success in drawing fans seem slim.
Virginia Beach's roster of high-end shopping options is similar to Oklahoma City, Memphis and New Orleans. Naturally, the Beach, like those cities, would be a small-market team.
With largely blue-collar jobs from the shipyards, a sizable Navy population and a lack of heavy corporate presence, the pockets of Hampton Roads' fans are most likely not deep enough to support 41 home games a year.
Tastes in the 757 generally have favored Ruby Tuesday and Hooters. (The region has more of both restaurants than the average NBA market.)
Salt Lake City and Milwaukee, two of the NBA's smaller metropolitan areas, are home to more of the higher-end retailers I looked at.
These stores matter. Teams in locations with fewer higher-end stores typically have less attendance than those with more options. Teams with an Ikea nearby averaged 7 percent more attendance during the 2010-2011 season than those with no warehouses of Scandinavian furnituremakers.
At Tuesday' presentation by developers in Virginia Beach, one speaker called Hampton Roads a big market that's under-served.
I believe that.
I'm just not sure it's under-served by the NBA.
Some of the most successful retailers and some of the smartest executives in the country, the ones who scout out where people with money shop, have passed on this region.
Maybe they misread us. Maybe the folks who want an NBA team see something I'm missing. Maybe the folks who believe an NBA team can succeed in Virginia Beach will run the numbers and discover something these retailers didn't.
But I can't help asking: What could possibly make the business sense of these retailers wrong and an NBA team right?
Mike Gruss, 757-446-2277, mike.gruss@pilotonline.com, PilotOnline.com/gruss
Source: http://hamptonroads.com/2012/08/retailer-research-shows-nba-arena-no-slam-dunk
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