A playoff appearance and some winning have woken up Orlando Magic fandom and Magic fans are already starting to make their presence felt.
The Ringer’s Bill Simmons claims he has never met an Orlando Magic fan in the wild. The Ringer’s NFL writer Kevin Clark is his go-to for all things Magic as comments as they arise. But when would they ever arise?
Magic fans stay fairly quiet in the larger #NBATwitter atmosphere. They have enough history to poke fun at and while they want the league to recognize them, but they are not pushing too much for attention.
The Magic have been fairly nondescript on a national basis for a long time — really since Dwight Howard left. If you are a team struggling to build, you are relegated to irrelevancy in the national conversation unless you are the Los Angeles Lakers or New York Knicks (maybe the Chicago Bulls).
So the Magic toiled. Being the butt of some jokes but not terrible enough to gain ridicule across the league — at least compared to some of the other terrible things some struggling franchises did.
Orlando is a fairly small market — 18th in the Nielsen/DMA Rankings — and so there are not many to advocate for them.
Ultimately, the Magic will have to win and play well to get noticed.
That will not stop the Magic from building a quiet and strong fan base at home. Winning last year and returning to the playoffs with a strong 22-9 kick to finish the season, sparked a lot of fans in the area.
The Amway Center was already fairly full for a team that was struggling for so long, but slowly the city picked up steam. By the time the magic clinched their playoff spot, the city was fully behind them.
Fans filled up Wall Street in Downtown Orlando to watch the Magic’s first playoff game in seven years. The Amway Center was packed for Games 3 and 4, making Toronto Raptors coach Nick Nurse comment on how difficult it was to hear inside the stadium.
The Magic were having their moment. The team may have lost in five games, but for the first time in nearly a decade, Orlando was having its moment on the NBA stage. Fans around the league had to pay attention to the magic, if for a moment.
Things have indeed changed in Orlando. Winning, even on a small scale, has awoken the fan base and the team is reaping the benefits.
The Magic might still be a bit of an afterthought. They still might not have the loudest or largest following. But the Magic are making waves. After a near-decade of irrelevancy, Magic fans are building their following and making waves.
FanSided named its FanSided 250, the ranking of fandoms throughout sports and entertainment. The Magic have cracked the list coming in at No. 170 in the ranking, the 20th-best mark among NBA teams.
You can thank a fairly large social following — No. 127 according to FanSided’s. The Magic have built a fairly strong international following with both a big fan following in the United Kingdom and a growing fan base in Brazil.
But winning is ultimately what draws interest. And interest in the Magic is growing, even with the team’s fairly slow start.
Fox Sports Florida reports viewership is up 109 percent from last year. This year’s 0.96 HH rating is outpacing last year’s rating of 0.46 and 2017’s rating of 0.80. It is on pace to be the Magic’s most-watched season since 2016.
From our good friends at @FOXSportsFL:#MagicAboveAll pic.twitter.com/zPE7t0lE8Y
— Orlando Magic PR (@Magic_PR) December 12, 2019
The Orlando Magic’s game Wednesday against the Los Angeles Lakers was the 13th time the Magic have achieved a local TV rating of 1.0. They did not reach that mark last year until the 75th game of the season.
At a time when the league is experiencing massive TV rating declines that are causing plenty of think pieces about the real future of the NBA, the Magic are experiencing a growth in interest. Fans are more engaged with the team than they have been in several years.
That is the power of winning of course. Fans expect the Magic to make the playoffs and the Magic are largely delivering, despite staying slightly below .500.
Orlando has also had plenty of fans fill up the Amway Center. Through 14 games, the Magic have total attendance of 232,747, according to Basketball-Reference. That is good for 11th in the league. Orlando has an average attendance of 16,625 fans (88.2 percent of capacity).
Attendance is slightly down. But the team should see that increase if they remain in the playoff race.
How long that lasts remains to be seen. If the Magic struggle to win for whatever reason things could change fairly quickly.
But even then, it still feels like Magic fans are not satisfied with merely a playoff appearance. They want the team to take a step forward. The excitement with Jonathan Isaac and Markelle Fultz emerging this year especially have kept interest up. Even if the team has struggled some out of the gate.
Magic fans though are starting to make their presence known. They are starting to puff their chests out again.
Magic games are an event again. And fans are starting to make waves.