Playground →
The Tampa Bay Lightning's top 10 nearest neighbors contain no other hockey teams — and only two Sports Teams at all: the Tampa Bay Rays at 0.98 and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers at 0.91. The dominant structural fact here is geography, not sport.
The shape is broad: scores descend gradually from those two near-perfect matches down through a wide mix of subcategories, with no single cluster pulling hard enough to define the set on its own. After the two fellow Tampa franchises, the next tier is Florida-rooted consumer brands — Busch Gardens Tampa Bay (0.86, Destinations), Publix (0.82, Grocery and Superstores), and Bahama Breeze (0.72, Restaurant). Below that, the top 10 opens into Florida politics: Nikki Fried (0.78) and Rick Scott (0.76), both Politicians, sit at positions five and six. Rounding out the ten are Cigar City Brewing (0.71, Breweries), Publix Super Markets (0.72, General Grocery Stores), Carrabba's Italian Grill (0.71, Casual Dining), and Bonefish Grill (0.70, Casual Dining). Across the ten, the subcategory mix spans Sports Teams, Destinations, Grocery, Restaurant, Politicians, Breweries, and Casual Dining — a profile shaped far more by a shared regional identity than by any single interest vertical.
What the broad shape reveals is an audience defined primarily by place: the Lightning's nearest neighbors are the brands, teams, and public figures that saturate the same Tampa Bay media environment.
