What do Utah Jazz fans think about the prospect of the team moving away from downtown Salt Lake City?
In case you missed it, The Salt Lake Tribune published an article last week detailing the Jazz’s considerations toward a new arena project. Officials on the Point Of The Mountain State Land Authority said Jazz leaders spoke to them about putting the stadium there roughly a year ago. Since then, Salt Lake City has been pushing behind the scenes to keep the Jazz downtown, multiple stakeholders told The Tribune.
We thought we’d ask the fans what they think given that news. After all, fans are the Jazz’s customers, and their approval or disapproval of the Jazz’s move will make a difference in the bottom line. We sent out a survey to our email list and our website, and 180 fans responded.
We also know that isn’t a very big sample, and we know that our email list may not reflect the wishes of Jazz fans as a whole. Taking that into account, we’re going to look at other polls from large Jazz fan and media accounts to see what their results indicated.
Let’s dig in.
The Tribune poll
We asked fans for their name, the city they live in, and the open-ended question: “Whenever the Utah Jazz build a new arena, where should it be and why?”
Overall, 141 of the 180 respondents (78%) wanted to keep the arena in Salt Lake City. Just 16 answered that they’d like it in Draper, or at the Point of the Mountain, or near the old prison site.
Twenty-four respondents gave other answers. Some Davis and Weber County residents wanted the arena closer to them in the northern end of the Wasatch Front; one noted that Davis, Weber, and Cache counties had a higher population than Utah County. Some suggested the Power District, where the Miller family wants to attract a Major League Baseball team. A couple suggested out of state locations like Las Vegas, clearly done with the whole Utah Jazz experience.
One particular smart aleck suggested the Jazz should move to San Juan County. “I could be bluffing, but I would like the arena to be built in San Juan County so I don’t have to drive 6 hours with my daughter to watch a game,” the reader wrote. “Surely my fellow friends near the lake of salt would not mind the drive south.”
But he brings up a good point: How much of people’s preference for where the arena is located comes down to where they live now?
I split the respondents into two categories: whether they lived closer to downtown Salt Lake City or the point of the mountain. Then, I sorted how they voted.
Of those who lived closer to downtown, 88% wanted the team to stay downtown. In fact, no respondent in this subset wanted the team to move to The Point.
But the respondents who lived closer to the southern end of the Wasatch Front gave surprising answers: 52% of those people said the arena should stay in Salt Lake City, while just 30% suggested The Point, and 17% suggested another location.
Yes, even a majority of those who might benefit from the proximity of the move preferred the downtown location.
Why? One respondent said they didn’t want the traffic at their home freeway exits in Draper. A Provo resident said, “Event centers help downtowns, and therefore entire cities, thrive.” And one Bluffdale resident said, “Teams belong in downtown areas. As cool as it’d be to have an arena so close to where I live, it just wouldn’t feel right.”
Other surveys
Besides the email poll, The Tribune also ran a poll on X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter. There, 72% of just over 1,500 respondents said that the team should be in Salt Lake City, 16.8% said The Point, and about 10% chose the Power District.
I recognize, though, that the email addresses or social media followers that The Salt Lake Tribune can send this survey to might be skewed — after all, Salt Lake is in our name. So what have other polls said about the issue?
JazzNationNews, which boasts about 21,000 fans on X and 58,000 on Facebook, asked its followers whether they supported the idea of a Draper arena. 59.5% of respondents said they were “100% anti Draper arena”, while 22.5% said they were “100% for Draper arena.” The remainder was unsure.
Finally, the media outlet KSL Sports also asked its followers the same question, both on its social media pages and on the radio. While they didn’t tally the responses to their poll, they found that “in our informal poll, Jazz fans overwhelmingly preferred to have the team remain in Salt Lake City.”
“Most fans cited the central location and history of having the Jazz downtown as the reason against relocating the home arena,” KSL Sports’ Ben Anderson wrote.
It’s a pretty clear sweep: So far fans seem to prefer the Jazz to stay in Salt Lake City rather than move to the ‘burbs.
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