Playground →
Two distinct audience neighborhoods define the Detroit Lions' similarity map: a tight Detroit civic-sports cluster and a broad athlete following that extends well beyond the city.
The shape is two-peak. At the top, Detroit Tigers (0.95) and Detroit Red Wings (0.93) form the strongest pull — audiences whose composition closely mirrors the Lions' own, almost certainly shaped by shared Detroit-market fandom. Michigan Football (0.90) and Detroit Pistons (0.85) reinforce this cluster, making four of the top ten neighbors Detroit or Michigan-rooted sports teams. The fifth Sports Teams entry, Cleveland Cavaliers (0.82), sits at the edge of this cluster and begins the bridge outward.
The second peak is athletes as individuals rather than franchises. Barry Sanders (0.92) is the strongest single athlete in the set — ranking third overall, ahead of several fellow Detroit teams — followed by Miguel Cabrera (0.85), Nate Burleson (0.82), and Antonio Brown (0.82). Four of the ten neighbors carry the Athletes subcategory, and they span baseball, football, and media, suggesting the Lions' audience tracks individual sports figures across sport lines, not just team affiliations. The lone outlier in the top 10 is Mojo In The Morning (0.90), a Podcasts and Radio entry that sits between the two peaks — the only non-sports, non-athlete neighbor in the set.
The overall shape is an audience anchored in Detroit civic identity but equally drawn to individual athlete personalities, with a local radio presence threading the two together.
