By GREG BISHOP for THE ILLINOIS RADIO NETWORK
SPRINGFIELD, Ill. (IRN) — If you were to guess what professional sports team’s Illinois license plate is the best selling, you’re likely to be surprised.
Since 2002, Illinois has offered specialty license plates that feature local sports teams. Available now are plates bearing the logos of the Chicago Cubs, White Sox, Bears, Blackhawks, and, most recently, the St. Louis Cardinals, along with a number of universities.
While Fanbuzz.com measured earlier in 2019 that professional baseball was the most popular sport in Illinois, the state’s hockey fans are most likely to display team pride on their license plate.
“It speaks to the loyalty of Blackhawks fans, even in a couple of years where they’ve been not really in the running for the Stanley Cup,” Illinois Secretary of State spokesman Dave Drucker said.
The state has sold 22,110 Blackhawks license plates, according to the latest figures from the Secretary of State’s office
In the battle for the CrossTown Cup, the SouthSiders are consistently showing up the Cubs. Even in the year that the team won the World Series, the Cubs plates were outsold by the Chicago White Sox, coming in third of the major sports team sales.
A new challenger recently entered the ring. Drucker said the state sold more than 1,000 St. Louis Cardinals license plates in just the first ten days of availability.
“In a 10-day period up to Sept. 13, they’d sold 1,000 sets of those plates,” Drucker said.
According to Vivid Seats, the Cubs are the most popular baseball ticket in Illinois, accounting for 42 percent of ticket sales in the first half of the 2015 season. But, a 2019 map of favorite team by county shows the Cardinals owning the majority of the state geographically.
Per the 2002 law, the teams don’t make money from the sale of plates, rather the proceeds go to schools.
Of all the state’s offering of specialty plates, the most popular is the Firefighters Memorial License plate, bringing in $698,782 in fiscal year 2018.