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Two of the primary growth strategies for Major League Soccer (MLS) have been team expansion and the construction of soccer-specific stadiums. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to determine the relationship between these factors and game-specific MLS spectator attendance.

Two multiple regression models, one using multi-level mixed effects linear regression and another using interval regression, were developed to explain the variation in attendance utilizing the two factors of interest along with other control factors that have been identified as attendance determinants in previous literature. Game-specific data were collected for five MLS seasons, 2007-2011.

The two regression models explained approximately 40 percent of the variation in spectator attendance and the results showed that expansion teams and soccer-specific stadiums were significantly related to attendance. However, the effect of soccer-specific stadiums was minimized due to the extreme success of the Seattle Sounders in drawing about twice as many fans as the next highest drawing franchise, yet playing in an American football stadium.

While many of the standard factors such as the presence of holidays and novelty players, competition from other professional teams, and day of week, competition from other professional teams; team quality failed to show significance. Expansion teams drew better than incumbent teams and the impact from soccer-specific stadia is weak given the success of the Seattle franchise (and possibly negative when excluding Seattle). Censoring of the dependent variable had a discernible impact on many of the attendance factors.

These findings may be useful to managers of MLS and their teams along with other professional teams and/or leagues that are investigating the use of either team expansion or the construction of new facilities to increase spectator attendance.

This is the first study to investigate the relationship between expansion and new stadium construction in MLS over multiple years. The results indicate that MLS’s decision to use team expansion and the construction of soccer-specific stadiums has been beneficial with respect to spectator attendance.

The Chinese Professional Baseball League (CPBL) experienced a rapid decline in attendance after the mid 1990s. In this study, market demand analysis is used to discover the causes of variation in CPBL attendance from 1990 to 2008. The ordinary least squares (OLS) is employed for model estimation. From this model, empirical evidence reveals that a homogenous sport substitute, Taiwan Major League (TML), the Major League Baseball (MLB) effect and game-fixing scandals in CPBL negatively influence CPBL attendance. Additionally, real income is found to negatively affect CPBL attendance, making CPBL games an inferior product. The proposed model accounts for approximately 91% of variation in CPBL attendance between 1990 and 2008.

The purpose of this paper is to use financial market prices formed in betting markets as a measure of uncertainty of outcome and other factors as it relates to hockey attendance in three top European leagues, the KHL, SHL, and Liiga. This is the first study of European hockey to use betting market odds to estimate the impact of home team win probability and uncertainty of outcome on attendance.

The design of this study is a multivariate regression model with log of attendance and percentage of arena capacity as dependent variables in two separate regressions. Controlling for other factors, the role of the home team win probability and its square are explored for individual game attendance.

Fans of the KHL and SHL are found to prefer to see their home team win, but also exhibit strong preferences for uncertainty of outcome. Fans of Liiga prefer to see the home team win, but do not exhibit as strong a preference for uncertainty of outcome. This differs from recent findings in the sport of baseball and from previous findings for the NHL.

Having a competitive league is not only important for television ratings, but also for in-person attendance in these European hockey leagues. Importance of uncertainty of outcome varies across leagues.

The paper uses financial market prices, betting market odds, as a measure of game expectations (home team win probability) and uncertainty of outcome and applies it to a new setting for three of the top European hockey leagues. The findings illustrate that uncertainty of outcome is important for the KHL and SHL, but statistically insignificant for Liiga.

The purpose of this paper is to focus on two internal organizational factors in college football teams (team powerfulness and team reputation) and their combined relationship on game attendance. Authors aim to validate new data published by Wall Street Journal (WSJ) and NCAA websites; and to develop a new conceptual model to examine the interaction effect of team powerfulness and team reputation on game attendance.

This study relies on secondary data collected from the WSJ’s “College Football’s Grid of Shame” publication and the NCAA official website. Data for 123 US college football teams are collected representing 13 conferences for seasons 2010–2014. Multi-level regressions are utilized for statistical analyses.

Results reveal that not only team’s powerfulness is required for more public attendance to games, but also team reputation strengthens this relationship. In other words, team reputation plays an important role in increasing games’ attendance. Team reputation alone does not bring more attendees to games.

This paper studies the relevance of team reputation in the field of sports management. This paper argues that in order to achieve superior financial benefits in college football games, it is important to properly manage team powerfulness and its legal and ethical behavior. In this way, a positive reputation can leverage game attendance to a larger extent.

Purpose of the study is to further expand insights into how weather impacts attendance at sporting events. With the NFL having only eight home games a year per team, it is more of an event than other North American sports. We explore this in terms of how sensitive fans are to weather, by not only looking at traditional factors, but also other weather variables available through Accuweather. In addition, the authors explore team success, outcome uncertainty and other factors as determinants of demand.

The method includes Tobit model of attendance in terms of percent of capacity in the National Football League. Model includes factors such as outcome uncertainty, team success, etc. but mainly focuses on weather. Weather factors studied include traditional variables such as temperature and precipitation, and also includes cloud cover, barometric pressure, wind speed and humidity. Different model specifications are included to explore results. Key findings allow for differences between games played outdoors versus indoors.

In terms of control variables, team success, new stadiums and stadium age play a significant role in attendance in terms of percentage of capacity. Outcome uncertainty does not appear to be important, and fans desire the opposite when the home team is an underdog. The main results concern the weather. When only traditional weather variables are included, precipitation plays a key role. With further expansion of the weather variables, it appears that cloud cover offers some additional information beyond precipitation. In addition, barometric pressure plays a minor, but statistically significant role as it relates to attendance in terms of capacity.

Including deeper and richer weather data helps to further explain attendance at sporting events. With the NFL, this may be limited by it being such as event due to the scarcity of games in a season. In addition, the weather variables are not truly independent, although they are not as correlated as may be anticipated on the surface. Use of different types of weather variables in models of attendance may help to deepen our understanding of factors influencing consumer decisions. These factors may play larger roles in sports with wider variance in attendance during the season.

The practical implications are that other weather-related variables besides temperature and precipitation may offer insight into consumer decisions related to attendance at sporting events. Cloud cover gives insights into anticipated poor weather in addition to it directly leading to less of a sunny day to be outdoors at an event. Barometric pressure has been shown to influence headaches and joint pain and may also influence consumer decisions to venture out to sporting events.

As data becomes more widely available in general, it's possible to add additional insights into factors influencing various forms of decision-making. In this study, we show that more information on weather can shed insights into consumer decisions as it relates to attending events such as sports. These decisions likely differ based upon whether the event is held outdoors or indoors. With more entertainment choices as substitutes, it is important to identify key factors which influence consumer decisions to help better structure events in the future.

Weather variables beyond temperature and precipitation are included in a Tobit model for NFL attendance using percentage of capacity as the dependent variable. These weather variables are cloud cover, wind speed, humidity, and barometric pressure. Cloud cover and barometric pressure were found to have some significant effects on percentage of capacity. When included, precipitation itself is no longer found to be significant, but precipitation interacted with games played in domes retains statistical significance as there are key differences between games held outdoors versus indoors.

As an exploratory study, the purpose of this paper is to examine the underlying motivations for attending soccer games.

Attendees at two soccer games in Athens, Greece were surveyed about their frequency of attendance at soccer games and their attitudes toward soccer. In total, 252 people from five randomly selected sections of the stadiums participated in the survey.

The results indicate that there are three major motivations – emotional excitement, socialization, and soccer atmospherics – and two identity salience factors – ardent soccer fans and rational soccer fans – for attending soccer games. The most important factor for attendance is being an ardent soccer fan closely followed by the emotional excitement factor. Among the demographic factors considered, only gender significantly affects soccer game attendance.

In contrast to previous studies that are somewhat descriptive, this research explicitly introduces factors related to social identity theory and attempts to predict soccer game attendance on the basis of a scale of factors that focus on the major motivations for attendance of soccer games, identity salience reasons, and demographic factors. The inclusion of social identity theory as a factor in the attendance of soccer games is a major contribution of this study. Contrary to most of the earlier studies, this study showed that the socialization factor is not related to attendance at soccer games.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the role of fighting (in addition to other variables) as it relates to attendance at minor league hockey games (ECHL).

Building upon previous research on hockey attendance, a regression model is specified with attendance as the dependent variable and fighting (measured as a running average of fights-per-game) as an independent variable. The sign and statistical significance of fighting is tested through the regression model.

Despite recent tragedies in the hockey world and public outcries against fighting, fighting is found to have a positive and significant effect on attendance at ECHL games.

Findings suggest that if fighting is removed from hockey in North America that teams will suffer attendance wise and it will hurt the overall profitability of teams and leagues. Teams in the ECHL that do not fight often may wish to have more “enforcers” on the team which would increase the number of fights and increase attendance.

Despite calls for its outright ban, fighting is popular with hockey fans. Even in a world where many game-day promotions are aimed at families, fighting appears to have a place in the game and is a desired attribute of this sport in terms of its entertainment value to fans.

First study of the ECHL (AA-equivalent minor league for professional hockey) on a game-by-game basis. This paper examines the role of fighting and violence in the world of professional sports. The regression model also includes highly detailed data on game day promotions used by all of the teams. The value of the paper lies in the public debate about fighting in hockey. The findings and implications of this paper are also of value to team and league management as it relates to fighting in hockey.

This paper investigates the role of competitive balance among teams in a league in predicting attendance at spectator sporting events. It also controls for the demographic and economic characteristics of the league's markets, and changes in the number of teams in the league. The research relies on a sample that includes 707 non-major professional team seasonal win-loss records (12,956 games) from five sports, aggregated into 75 seasons to develop a model consistent with extant literature. The authors find that competitive balance and average income in the league's markets are significant predictors of leaguewide attendance.

Experiences of high quality games between top-class sports teams could influence sports fans’ decision to attend the domestic sports games. For example, soccer fans who watched the World Cup games between the best national teams are likely to be disappointed with the performance of their domestic league teams after the World Cup event, while more people might be attracted to watch a soccer game because of their increased interest in soccer games. The purpose of this paper is to investigate how the international sports event (i.e. the World Cup) influences the demand of the domestic sports league games in the non-hosting country.

To test these antithetical hypotheses, the authors collect the Chinese Super League game-level data from 2004 to 2011. For analysis, the authors propose two empirical models rigorously developed based on previous sports marketing theories.

The findings are surprising compared to previous studies for the hosting countries or countries that performed spectacularly during the World Cup tournaments. The authors find that the international event negatively influences the attendance of domestic games. Specifically, it gives salience to the competitive quality of a match and helps enhance the impact of star players. Furthermore, the authors find evidence of dynamic effects of the international event.

The study contributes to the previous sports literatures by expanding our understanding of the effect of international sports events. Particularly, the results shed light on international events’ impact on the domestic sports league demand in more general conditions based on its influence on people’s behavior, rather than focusing on the effect caused by facility development or dramatic performance during the international event.

The purpose of this paper is to isolate factors predictive of event attendees, and assist tourism professionals such as members of host committees, in maximizing the number of out-of-town visitors to their region and optimizing tourism-related revenue when hosting college football bowl games.

A total of 16 demand variables were entered into a hierarchical regression model, including the stature of the event and market-related variables, as well as team-related variables reflecting team or program stature and current season performance.

A final model containing seven variables (bowl age, market population, conference affiliation, bowl game stature, season wins, home attendance, and distance traveled) predicted 77.5 percent of the variance in bowl game attendance.

This paper illustrates the use of predictive modeling for major sport event attendance with a unique sample and variables explored. Future research may build off the model to explore attendance for other populations or events.

The applied nature of this study allows practitioners working in the tourism and event management field to incorporate a predictive model to best select participants in sporting events to maximize event attendees.

Understanding the variables which predict event attendees in the context of college football bowl games provide useful data to practitioners. This study advances this area of research by treating event participants as unique observations (something which has not been done in prior studies), and looking at a new data set which incorporates the College Football Playoff era.