If Sixers leave Wells Fargo Center for new arena, Philly will be an outlier among sports towns

If the Sixers indeed move forward with their plan to relocate their arena to 10th and Market, after calling the Wells Fargo Center home since it was opened in 1996, they would be making Philadelphia somewhat of an anomaly among American sports cities.

And, no, we’re not talking about the city finally having a downtown stadium after the Phillies’ failed attempt to relocate to Center City back in 2000 — plenty of other markets have gorgeous state-of-the-art facilities right in the heart of their cities. We’re talking about the fact that they would become the only city in North America to have National Basketball Association and National Hockey League franchises that play in separate buildings.

» READ MORE: The Sixers want to build a new $1.3 billion arena in Center City

We emphasize “city” there because there are a handful of markets where professional basketball and hockey teams play in different arenas, but none of them actually plays in the same city, which is precisely what would happen if the Sixers say farewell to the Flyers and move out of South Philly and into space that’s now part of the Fashion District.

There are 14 cities with both NBA and NHL franchises. Half keep it simple, with Boston, Chicago, Dallas, Denver, Detroit, Toronto, and Washington all using one arena shared by both teams. The same can be said for half of New York and Los Angeles, with the Knicks and Rangers sharing Madison Square Garden and the Lakers, Clippers and Kings all sharing Crypto.com Arena (formerly Staples Center).

But that’s where things start getting complicated.

In the L.A. area, there are also the Ducks, who technically play in the same media market, but at a different arena and in a different city (Honda Center in Anaheim). Similarly in New York, there are the Nets, who play at Barclays Center in Brooklyn, and the Islanders, who at one time shared Barclays with the Nets but moved back to the Nassau Veterans Memorial Coliseum in Uniondale following renovations, before opening a new hockey-specific arena in Elmont (UBS Arena) before last season.

» READ MORE: Everything we know about the Sixers’ plans for a new Center City arena

Then there’s the San Francisco Bay Area, which is home to the NBA’s Warriors and the NHL’s Sharks. While both fan bases greatly overlap, the teams play in different arenas, with the Warriors at the new Chase Center in San Francisco and the Sharks stuck in the soon-to-be 30-year-old SAP Center in San Jose. The main difference here, aside from the teams being at opposite ends of the San Francisco Bay, is that other than a season in which the Oakland Arena was under construction in 1996-97, the two teams never shared a home.

In South Florida, the Heat’s FTX Arena in Miami and the Panther’s FLA Live Arena in Sunrise are 35 miles apart — or an hour in Miami rush hour — making the Panthers much closer to Fort Lauderdale than Miami. For their first five seasons, the Panthers shared the since-demolished Miami Arena with the Heat, but they moved out of there in 1998, followed by the Heat a year later.

» READ MORE: What would you name a new Sixers arena?

In Minnesota, the Timberwolves play at Target Center (Minneapolis), while the Wild play at the Xcel Energy Center (St. Paul). Are they Twin Cities? Sure. But they’re not the same city. And that’s worth noting here, although unlike the two South Florida arenas, these two are only about 10 miles apart. Still, the two Philly arenas would be less than four miles apart.

And finally, there’s the curious case of the Arizona Coyotes, who initially shared the America West Arena (now called the Footprint Center) with the Phoenix Suns from 1996 to 2003 and then played at the Gila River Arena in Glendale until the end of last season. Next season, they’ll be in Tempe at the Arizona State University’s multipurpose arena, known as Desert Financial Arena.

» READ MORE: The Sixers aren’t the first team to eye Center City. Here's why it didn't work for the Phillies.

But, again, it’s worth remembering that none of these markets is doing what Philly would be.

Here’s a look at the markets mentioned above and the driving distance between the two arenas (according to the fastest route on Google Maps), sorted by which is shortest at noon on a Thursday, which could be very different from rush hour traffic.

*The arenas would actually be just 3.8 miles apart if you took Broad Street, but time-wise that would likely take longer.

» READ MORE: Philly mayor says proposed Sixers arena is at an ‘ideal site’ and confirms no city funding is planned

Unless another expansion franchise joins one of the leagues — or a team in one of the cities that currently shares an arena decides to move — in the next nine years, which is about how long it is expected that this project will take, then Philly could become a testing ground for whether major American cities have the need for two 18,000-plus seat arenas so close to one another.

Of course, Philly is no stranger to having two arenas close to each other — it’s only been 13 years since the Wells Fargo Center’s next door neighbor, the Spectrum, was demolished. And those behind the Sixers’ new arena plans believe the city’s appetite for events is more than enough to keep two arenas busy.

76 Devcorp, the group in charge of the 76 Place project, tasked arena and sports venue consultant CAA-ICON Strategic Advisory with doing “a competitive analysis of the current venue demand factors and supply utilization in the top twenty+ metro areas, including Philadelphia, and ultimately concluded that Philadelphia could support and effectively utilize two major sports arenas,” 76 Devcorp told The Inquirer in an email.

With over six million people in the region, the group says the market “could see combined event totals of nearly twice the current event level (with only Wells Fargo) once the new arena is developed.”