Fewer teams, more games, larger attendance? Evidence from the structural change in basketball's EuroLeague

Abstract

This study investigated whether an increased number of games between a reduced number of high-quality teams has a positive effect on stadium attendance. We did this by taking advantage of a recent structural change that occurred in basketball's EuroLeague tournament. Starting from the 2016/17 season, the two short round-robin tournaments (regular season and Top 16) among 24 teams merged into a longer round-robin tournament among 16 teams. In the new structure, the number of each team's games per season increased by more than 25 percent, which increased the aggregate attendance. In our empirical analyses, we investigated attendance per game by using data from the three seasons before and after the change. Comparing the attendance of the same teams that played before and after the change, our fixed effects estimation reveals a significant decrease of close to nine percent in attendance per game after the change compared to the Top 16 stage. We also found no significant difference in attendance after the change compared to the regular season before the change. Finally, we found that the main decrease in attendance after the change appears in the first half of the season, when the games are likely to be perceived as less decisive than in the second half of the season.