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Economic crisis, sport success and willingness to pay: the case of a football club

Pablo Castellanos Garcia (Departamento de Economia Aplicada I, Universidad de A Corun˜a, A Corun˜a, Spain)
Jaume García Villar (Departament d’Economia I Empresa, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona, Spain)
José Manuel Sánchez Santos (Facultad de Economía y Empresa, Universidad de A Corun˜a, A Corun˜a, Spain)

Sport, Business and Management

ISSN: 2042-678X

Article publication date: 8 July 2014

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Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to obtain evidence about the scope of the determinants of the willingness to pay (WTP) of the residents in a Spanish city (A Coruña) for keeping a professional football team (Deportivo) competing at the highest level. Apart from the individual socio-demographic characteristics of the respondents and their attitudes as football fans, the authors try to know the influence on the WTP of factors such as the general economic conditions and the plausibility of the team disappearance.

Design/methodology/approach

The value of the intangible benefits associated with the team existence is derived from the application of the contingent valuation method (CVM), using two surveys conducted in 2003 and 2012, respectively, with the aim of obtaining information concerning citizens’ behaviour and attitudes towards a professional football team.

Findings

The consumption of public goods generated by the local football team is relatively inelastic to the sport success and general economic situation, but the value assigned by residents to those goods depends on these factors. Of the two components of the WTP, the non-use value is especially sensitive to changes both in the Spanish economic conditions and in the quality of the public goods generated by the football team.

Originality/value

This is the first study that applies the CVM to a football team controlling for both the general economic conditions and the team sport success and, as such, it provides interesting insights into the nature and scope of the determinants of individuals’ WTP in a CVM setting.

Keywords

Citation

Castellanos Garcia, P., García Villar, J. and Manuel Sánchez Santos, J. (2014), "Economic crisis, sport success and willingness to pay: the case of a football club", Sport, Business and Management, Vol. 4 No. 3, pp. 237-249. https://doi.org/10.1108/SBM-07-2013-0023

Publisher

:

Emerald Group Publishing Limited

Copyright © 2014, Emerald Group Publishing Limited

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