You'd be surprised. There are a large amount of commuters from Orange County to LA of course, but then there are a ton from Riverside, Thousand Oaks, Valencia, the Inland Empire, etc. So yes Los Angeles is the hub between Santa Barbara to Orange County, with Camp Pendelton serving as a buffer between Orange County and San Diego. But while it is the hub, there are equal, and maybe just slightly less, business taking place in Orange County. LA is so packed with it now, that Orange County is almost equal in business terms. All of SoCal is one huge urban sprawl, but the only thing that is really different between LA and Orange County is that LA has its clearly defined downtown. I'd say they are almost on even terms at this point. Plus there is equal traffic going in either direction on freeways in the morning in most places, that's a good enough indicator Basically if LA vanished, then things would shift easily to Orange County. They'd be affected sure, because initially everything spread out from LA from large to small, but now everything is the large urban sprawl. Things have built up to be equal entities, but there are the dividing lines of course. Trust me, they're connected, but they are separate enough. To bring this example back to the sports teams, a majority of Angels/Ducks fans come from Orange County, Riverside, and I know the Angels at least extend into the South Bay. They do draw from LA (the Angels more than the Ducks for sure), but not as much as you would think. Really the comparison of SoCal (minus SD) is analogous to the Bay Area (SF,SJ,OAK). Yes they are connected via urban sprawl, but they are different areas.