Abstract
Abstract Widespread belief posits that a relationship exists between results obtained in European football competitions and live attendances at domestic league games. As part of the Europeanization process, international tournaments increasingly attract fans’ attention, often at the expense of national competitions, yet research up to date has focused on a wide array of explanatory variables for game attendance (spectator demand), but less on variables concerning how domestic teams perform in Europe. This article aims to fill the research gap by asking whether match attendances in national leagues can be predicted based on the results obtained by the domestic club teams in international competitions. UEFA team coefficients and domestic attendance figures for 74 European cup participations of Romanian teams spread over seventeen years from the 2000/2001 to the 2016/2017 season serve as input data for a regression model with an F-test and a p-value test. The Null Hypothesis instinctually claims no relationship exists between the variables, yet research results invalidate it for the good of the Alternative Hypothesis. The Discussions section presents what effects winning or losing in European cups can have on fans’ motivation to come and watch matches in the national league.
Highlights
The consumption of professional team sports is a constituent in the formation of modern European culture (Tomlinson et al, 2011; Williams, 2007)
The purpose of this research is to verify if results obtained in European cups have got any influence on the stadium attendances at matches played in the domestic football league
The Country Coefficient is an indicator of a country’s overall performance in Europe, computing an average on how all clubs teams have performed aggregately. Unlike this sort of approach, this paper takes into account all 74 individual European cup participations that Romanian teams have enjoyed over the past seventeen years, starting with the 2000/2001 season and finishing with 2016/2017
Summary
The consumption of professional team sports is a constituent in the formation of modern European culture (Tomlinson et al, 2011; Williams, 2007). A good deal of the Europeans’ love with football has been influenced by UEFA’s (The Union of European Football Associations) postbelic quest to enliven international club tournaments (Geeraert, 2016). The creation of the continent’s two major competitions (the Champions League and the Europa League) has led to a pluralization of European football, spreading fans’ attention between the matches played in the domestic leagues and the ones in the international cups. Mutz (2015) believes that, while being concerned with what happens within their national boundaries, fans tend to shift attention towards more developped international contests, so in the case of peripheral football states with less powerful national leagues. The Champions League and the Europa League are iconic brands enjoying increased popularity among fans, which leads to a reframing of European consciousness (King, 2000).
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