World's Imaging Centre Captures North America's Largest Sports Market

Rochester, N.Y. isn’t exactly the first city that comes to mind when thinking about big market professional sports teams.

The closest city, to Rochester, with big market teams is 50-miles southwest in Buffalo, N.Y., home to the NHL Sabres and NFL Bills, and the next closest city is about 70-miles, across Lake Ontario, in Toronto.

Although, Rochester is home territory to the Buffalo Sabres and Buffalo Bills, Rochester has more professional sports teams, of its own, than any other single city in the country.

Their tie to the Sabres and Bills lie with Sabres’ owner and Rochester billionaire, Tom Golisano, and the Bills training camp is held at St. John Fisher College, home of the Cardinals, in Rochester.

Rochester was named as the top sports market in the country, by Street & Smith’s Sport Business Journal; the No. 10 “best golf city” in America, by Golf Magazine and the best sports town in the country, by Scarborough Research.

The city holds one of six franchises in the history of North American professional sports that have been played in the same city, uninterrupted since the 1800s. This team is the Triple-A baseball, Rochester Red Wings. The other five cities’ teams include the Chicago Cubs, Cincinnati Reds, Philadelphia Phillies, Pittsburgh Pirates and the St. Louis Cardinals.

Among North American cities with, at least, seven professional teams, Rochester was the only city whose teams all have cumulative winning, regular season records.

Rochester doesn’t limit itself to major sport teams, thought, but also extreme snow sports.

The area has 11 ski resorts that are open year-round and known for western New York and southern Ontario’s finest slopes.

One of North America’s most popular ski resorts is HiliMont, nestled in the heart of the Finger Lakes on top of western New York’s highest peaks. “By most measures, HoliMont is North America’s largest private ski area devoted to family skiing adventures,” the resort’s website said.

The nine lifts service, more than, 50 slopes, trails and halfpipes, and natural snow is guaranteed all year with an average of more than, 200 inches during the winter months.

There are 19 colleges and universities in Rochester that, mostly, compete at the Division II and III level.

Monroe Community College (MCC), which should compete in the NJCAA, is a dominant force in Division II athletics capturing several National Championships in men’s ice hockey and women’s soccer. MCC is part of the State University of New York (SUNY) system, much like Division I universities, Buffalo and Albany.

The Division I exceptions in Rochester is Hobart College that compete D-I in men’s lacrosse and RIT men’s hockey.

RIT hockey consistently ranks in NCAA polls’ Top 25, while walking away with two consecutive conference championships in the last three-years. Recently, senior, Steve Pinizzotto, was called up with the NHL Washington Capitals.

Despite ice hockey reigning as the dominant sport in Rochester, the city has deemed the titles of Baseball City, USA and Soccer Town, USA, instead.

Rapper and songwriter, Beneficial, raps:

“We got sports of all sorts

the Roc has it all,

whether it’s soccer, hockey, foot, base

or basketball.

You can check the record books for

the Royals and the Amerks,

and we got the Rhinos, Redwings and the Rattlers.”

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