Stadium attendance and television audience demand in English league football

TLDR

Demand studies of professional team sports have traditionally focused on stadium attendance, but with broadcasting advances teams now generate revenue from both stadium goers and broadcasters, and no prior work has jointly assessed match‑day attendance and television audience demand. The study aims to jointly model match‑day attendances and television audiences for tier‑two English league football. The authors use data from tier‑two English league football to construct a model that simultaneously estimates match‑day attendance and television audience demand. The model finds that televised matches reduce stadium attendance, but higher stadium attendance positively influences television audience size. © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Abstract

Abstract Demand studies of professional team sports have traditionally focused on stadium attendance; however, advances in broadcasting mean that teams generate revenue from stadium goers and broadcasters alike. Previous studies of demand have focused on stadium attendance and television audiences, but none have assessed the demand for match‐day attendances and demand by television audiences jointly. This study models match‐day attendances and television audiences using data from tier‐two of English league football. It shows that while televised matches depress stadium attendances, ceteris paribus , there is an important feedback in that larger stadium attendances have positive impacts on the size of television audiences. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.