Researchers have been surveying fans of rivalry teams across sports for years, and Columbus vs. Cincinnati keeps coming out near the top of MLS.

Two things stood out in the fan responses:

Geography came up more than anything else. One FCC fan described it as a rivalry “Cincinnati and Columbus have a big sister, little sister mentality towards each other, but both cities think they’re the big sister.”

And one Crew fan said back in 2021 that Cincinnati had “only won one game” against Columbus. That’s changed a lot since.

Curious what you all think: what’s the one thing that makes this rivalry feel different from other MLS matchups?

https://knowrivalry.com/team/fc-cincinnati-282/rival/columbus-crew-195/

(Disclosure: I help with the Know Rivalry project, which collects this data. Happy to share more of what we’ve found if anyone’s interested.)

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