WASHINGTON — Sports are constantly ranking and re-ranking themselves. It’s part of the fun of being a sports fan, debating the best and worst of anything and everything. But when you take a step back from dissecting statistics debating legacies, what matters the most in the sporting world is the fan experience.

Professional sports rely upon this experience to continue to grow and become more lucrative. Sure, there are hefty television contracts that support each league now, but the core experience of what it means to be a fan is attending a game in person.

Here in D.C., we’re lucky enough to have a professional franchise in each of the five major American sports. And while we can all argue which team is the best or most popular, what we tried to determine in these rankings is which is the best to actually watch in person, as a fan.

To do so, we broke down the fan experience into five categories:

• The quality and excitement of the on-field product
• Transportation and parking options and accessibility
• Venue concessions and amenities
• Game day environment, from fan support to in-game entertainment
• Ticket options, availability and prices

Each team was ranked in each of the five categories from 1 (awful) to 5 (excellent) by four of our sports or newsroom staff members with experience attending games. Those numbers were then added together to form a composite score out of 100.

So, with no further ado, click through the slides to see our professional D.C. sports fan experience rankings.