I believe I was the first one to point out the fact that government & business sectors have dumped the term Delaware Valley in favor of Greater Philadelphia Region. I also advised that I had firsthand insight to this as a small business owner. I tried to stay quiet on the sidelines but I'm stepping in with the hope that we can move on from what it is & isn't & concentrate our energy on more soccer centered discussion. To help put an end to the back & forth about what is & isn't included in the Greater Philadelphia Region I'm posting all ELEVEN counties that make up the federal government's definition: ***in alphabetical order so no one feels slighted Bucks (PA) Burlington (NJ) Camden (NJ) Chester (PA) Delaware (PA) Glouster (NJ) Mercer (NJ) Montgomery (PA) New Castle (DE) Philadelphia (PA) Salem (NJ) BUT WAIT! There's MORE! Anticipating that some of you are thinking 'who the hell is this self- crowned authority on the subject?" I'm including a direct link to a map of the Greater Philadelphia Region from selectgreaterphila.com: http://www.selectgreaterphila.com/why/counties.cfm ***for those not familiar with the area, in addition to being a city, Philadelphia is also a county with the county limits & city limits being one in the same Who's gonna hang out with me @ the DC United Championship Celebration in a few weeks?
This is my geography coming out, but there are several other counties not on their list that have have cultural, historic and econmic ties to Philadelphia, particularly in South Eastern PA and South Jersey. These other counties would also be a part of the Philadelphia sports market.
I'm guessing that you're thinking about places like Lancaster County in PA, and Atlantic, Ocean, Cumberland and Cape May in NJ. They have ties, but I don't think you can count them in completely when looking at 'Greater Philadelphia'. Ocean county is a border county when it comes to sports, half like the NY area teams, and half the Philadelphia area teams. You can earn the support of these 'outer rim' counties, but I think any kind of attendance from these people should be considered a bonus. Kind of like fans from SE PA, and DE are a bonus to DC United. They know those fans are there, they just can't use the resources to target them. EDIT: A side story from this week. I've been filling out security paperwork for my new job assignment, and our 'security officer' (or secretary that knows where to mail the forms) thought it was suspicious that I had lived in PA and worked in DE, twice! I explained that I merely commuted from home to work, so she wanted me to put in a lengthy explanation of why I did this (8 years ago!). So being the smart ass that I am, I offered to do the same thing for jobs I had in the company that required me to commute from VA to MD or DC. She replied "no because DC's a big metropolitan area and it's expected".......so I sent along a nice little geography lesson explaining the Tri-State area and how we use things like cars, trains, and bridges to get around, and that the country is littered with places where folks commute across state borders, and how that's the beauty of a free society. That went over well......