The growing interest in sports has made it such that events like the last Super Bowl LVI brought together more than 112 million people behind the TV only in the United States. Although on a smaller scale, a similar phenomenon happens for championship definitions in the NBA, MLB, NHL, or MLS.
Sports are a big thing in the USA and the sports industry has grown so much in the past years that many businesses thrive thanks to offering activities related to sports. Bars & restaurants are almost obliged to install TV screens on their premises to try and attract clients on matchdays. Hotels have their rooms booked months in advance when there's a big sporting event in the city where they hold their businesses.
Other activities such as online platforms thrive in the online world by offering the best betting sites where fans can take their sports-watching experience to the next level by betting on their favorite teams and athletes. Due to the growing popularity of sports, bookmakers offer betting markets for virtually every sport available, from the mainstream likes of basketball and football to niche sports like horse racing or cricket. And to attract more clients, the different bookmakers offer promising welcome offers and bonuses that allow users to start betting without the need of using their own money at first.
It's in this context that the cluster of sporting franchises is being constructed in Charleston and South Carolina. Sports teams and athletes also play an important role in the lives of people and their identification with a city. Local authorities always set on their agendas the efforts of bringing teams to their cities to foster community spirit, teamwork values, and a source of entertainment and distraction for their citizens.
Even if there are no major league franchises in South Carolina, there are many popular teams in minor leagues that still gather thousands of fans in their arenas and contribute to the overall identity of people with their state.
The number one sport in South Carolina is college football. Clemson University's Tigers play at the Memorial Stadium which has regular attendances of more than 80,000 fans during the season. They've managed to win three National Championships, in 1981, 2016, and 2018, which also shows their importance and why they're so popular in South Carolina. And as every big team needs a big rivalry, the Tigers hold one with the neighboring University of South Carolina's Gamecocks. The Gamecocks also gather more than 70,000 spectators in the Williams-Brice Stadium which is a surprising feat making these franchises two of the biggest teams in college football in the USA and members of the famous Power Five Conferences.
Other popular sports include ice hockey, and even if there's no natural ice in South Carolina, there's a strong ice hockey heritage in the state as the South Carolina Stingrays were the first professional ice hockey team to be established in the state. The Stingrays play in the North Charleston Coliseum and have won one regular-season title in 1997, among other distinctions such as 6 division championships (the latest in 2016) and other 6 conference championships with as many as 4 in the last 13 years (2009, 2015, 2017, 2018). The Stingrays grew one of the biggest fanbases in their beginnings, drawing as much as 9,000 fans during their first season back in 1993, but these numbers decreased in the present. Nowadays, they gather an average of 3,000 fans per game.
Baseball holds many minor league teams like the Charlotte Knights, the Greenville Drive, the Augusta Greenjackets, the Charleston RiverDogs, the Columbia Fireflies and the Myrtle Beach Pelicans.
Basketball has its share of minor league representatives with the South Carolina Warriors, the Greenville Galaxy, and the Palmetto State Rizers. Although college basketball is more successful with the South Carolina's Gamecocks basketball team collecting trophies in the men's and women's divisions equally while gathering more than 10,000 spectators in the Colonial Life Arena.
And a sport that's picked up a lot of fans in the past few years is soccer. With the growth of the Major League of Soccer, second division franchises like the Charleston Battery have grown a large fanbase. The Battery is the oldest professional soccer team in the USA, tied with the Richmond Kickers.
South Carolina has an amazing array of sporting franchises and it could be just about time that the state gets to host a major league team. The fanbase has proven that they are present when it comes to supporting their teams.
