Sporting Event Attendance Research Articles

Social Ties, Network Socioeconomic Diversity and Sporting Event Attendance

Heterogeneous social networks are the source of valued life outcomes, and this heterogeneity is associated with different circumstances and personal attributes. This paper analyses the size and socioeconomic diversity of social networks of people who attend sporting events. The relationship between sports participation and social networks has been widely analysed. However, the role of attending sporting events in the creation of different forms of social capital, specifically networks’ socioeconomic heterogeneity, remains unclear. A better understanding of this issue may help to clarify the social impact of sports participation. Drawing on a unique dataset collected through the administration of a questionnaire to a representative sample of the Spanish population and employing an ad hoc, class-based position generator, we show that attendance to sporting events is associated with social mixing and the creation of networks of people from different occupational classes. Indeed, the size of these effects increases with the frequency of attendance. These results suggest that attending sporting events is associated with bridging social capital and may foster social integration and life opportunities for those who are less advantaged.

Getting back to the event: COVID-19, attendance and perceived importance of protective measures

Current COVID-19 realities impose additional challenges to sporting event organisers who now have to consider and include new protective measures for the safety and security of both active and passive participants. This study focuses on event consumers and issues related to their intention to attend future sporting events and their perception of how important they find some of the safety-related protective measures when attending sporting events following the COVID-19 crisis. Based on the empirical study of residents from one Middle East and two European countries, the results suggest that, once all restrictions on movement and sporting event attendance is allowed to resume, most of the respondents will attend events in their home country within few weeks. In addition, the respondents from a country that experienced more severe consequences of the pandemic perceive all protective measures as more important than respondents from countries that were less affected.

Characterizing traveling fans: a workflow for event-oriented travel pattern analysis using Twitter data

ABSTRACT Characterizing event attendees’ travel patterns is key to understanding the dynamics of social events in cities. However, the scientific investigation of event travel patterns has been hindered by the difficulty in gathering travel diaries of participants. Geotagged microblogs provide new opportunities for studying event travel patterns by offering rich locational and semantic information of attendees. Here, we develop, implement, and apply a workflow to characterize travel behaviors of event attendees with geotagged Twitter data, using college football events as a case study. The workflow includes five steps: 1) filtering event attendees using real-time geotagged tweets, 2) identifying origins of the event attendees using historical timeline tweets, 3) identifying past sports-related activities at travel destinations using topic modeling, 4) computing user movement features using origin-destination travel flows, and 5) identifying atypical travel patterns to characterize event attendees. The travel patterns uncovered in the study offer insights into user interests and travel behaviors related to sporting event attendance. The findings demonstrate that our method holds promise in revealing long-term event travel patterns (not limited to sporting events) through the use of geotagged microblogs.

Deporte activo y pasivo: ¿Una relación de conveniencia?

This empirical paper studies the relationship between individual decisions regarding active and passive sport activities, using a survey conducted in the Spanish region of Navarra in 2007. Firstly, we estimate a bivariate Probit model and a multinomial Logit to analyze sports practice and sporting event attendance. Secondly, we apply a bivariate Tobit model to estimate the determinants of individual expenditures related to both activities. In both participation and expenditures, the results show a significant and positive correlation between active and passive sport activities after controlling for socio-demographic variables.

Symbiotic Relationship Between Sport Media Consumption and Spectatorship: The Role of Flow Experience and Hedonic Need Fulfillment

When it comes to the relationship between sport media consumption (SMC) and sporting event attendance, two contradicting notions have been dominant: symbiosis vs. competition. With a focus on consumers’ hedonic need fulfillment and the psychological concept of flow experience, the current study examined whether SMC stimulates spectatorship (symbiotic relationship). Specifically, we aimed to examine the impact of a personal factor (team identification) and a situational factor (perceived team performance) on flow experience and how the flow experience drives attendance intention through hedonic need fulfillment. Data on 386 sport media consumers who watched a 2014 World Cup match on television were collected and analyzed for the study. The results of structural equation modeling (SEM) analysis revealed that both team identification and perceived team performance positively influenced flow experience, which in turn significantly influenced future spectatorship intention through hedonic need fulfillment. Theoretical and managerial implications of the findings are discussed.

Enhancing the Fan Experience at Live Sporting Events: The Case of Stadium Wi-Fi

While live sport event attendance remains a pervasive and progressing issue for university athletic programs, athletic directors should consider strategies to boost perceptions of stadium innovativeness. Professional sport leagues have pursued the adoption of Wi-Fi capabilities much more aggressively than their collegiate sport counterparts. This case introduces the Wi-Fi adoption issue for collegiate sport including a conversation surrounding the foundational technical aspects of Wi-Fi and cellular data for sport venues, the current status of Wi-Fi for collegiate athletics in comparison with professional leagues, and the benefits and drawbacks of Wi-Fi adoption. Case participants are asked to evaluate the merits of Wi-Fi adoption for a “Power Five” institution from the position of the athletic director. Participants will address adopting functional technology for the rise in college esports, Wi-Fi inclusion for indoor and outdoor venues, and comparative analyses among connected and disconnected stadiums.

Examining Determinants of Sport Event Attendance: A Multilevel Analysis of a Major League Baseball Season

Attendance data in sports leagues are organized at more than one level and thus are nested data with factors varying by individual games (e.g. single game attendance figure), which are nested within the factors varying by teams (e.g. local population and income level, stadium). Such a nested data structure requires a multilevel modeling approach for an accurate examination of attendance. Also, although the previous application of multilevel modeling to sport attendance research has been limited to the data aggregated and averaged by seasons or by teams, no multilevel modeling of attendance data at the individual game level is available. The uniqueness of the current study is its extension of the multilevel modeling approach by analyzing the audience data at the individual game level. Thus, this study examined the relationship between attendance determinants and single game attendance in a Major League Baseball (MLB) season by using multilevel modeling with 14 game level variables and 12 team level variables. Twelve predictors (e.g. home/visiting team playoff appearances, day of game, season progress, ticket price, stadium capacity, game uncertainty) significantly (p < .05) influenced attendance.

Association between sporting event attendance and self-rated health: an analysis of multiyear cross-sectional national data in Japan

BackgroundThis study examined the extent to which sporting event attendance is associated with self-rated health. Drawing from an economic model of health production and psychological research on the health benefits of psychosocial resources, sporting event attendance was hypothesized to have a positive relationship with self-rated health.MethodsA two-level multilevel ordered logistic regression was used to analyze multiyear cross-sectional data collected from national surveys in Japan.ResultsThe results demonstrate that, controlling for the effects of personal and environmental characteristics, sporting event attendance positively correlates with self-rated health over a 12-year period. Specifically, when compared to individuals who did not attend any sporting event during the past year, those who attended a sporting event were 33% more likely to indicate a higher level of self-rated health.ConclusionsThese findings provide evidence for a positive association between sport spectatorship and the perception of general health and contribute to the literature examining the relationship between sport spectatorship and health outcomes.

The attendance at sporting events: A generalized theory and its implications

This article generalizes the well-known negative binomial distribution (NBD) theory to attendance behavior at sporting events. Using data from a large national survey across a range of sporting events in Australia, including Australian football, rugby league, soccer (outdoor), horse racing, motor sports, rugby union, cricket (outdoor), netball (indoor and outdoor), basketball (indoor and outdoor), harness racing, and dog racing, we show that the NBD is very robust in describing sporting event attendance behavior. This result has implications for sporting event marketing activities, such as which attendee segments should be targeted, how to increase ticket sales, as well as predicting future attendance behavior.

Sport event attendance as a function of education: evidence from the UK

ABSTRACTThis article studies the role of education in the decision to attend sporting events. The overall objective is to verify whether more educated individuals are more likely to go to sports events than their less educated counterparts. If education socializes persons to focus on sports, it would then partially offset negative alternatives such as alcohol, drug abuse and unlawful behaviours, creating a positive externality. Sport events consumption is extensive, highlighting the potential economic importance of the sports-education externality. To establish the role of education in sport attendance, this article applies a probabilistic linear regression model to data from the UK. The econometric formulation associates sport event attendance in the left hand side with education in the right hand side, while controlling for the socioeconomic variables that are known to affect a consumer’s decision to go to a sport event: gender, age, income, employment status, children, marital status, and geographical location, among others. These findings add to a somewhat limited literature on both the effect of education on sports attendance and secondarily, on the impact of other socioeconomic variables on attendance.

The gender gap in sport event attendance in Europe: The impact of macro-level gender equality

This paper studies the gender gap in sport event attendance – characterized by higher male and lower female participation – using a macro-sociological and cross-national comparative approach. We argue that because gender is produced and justified in the realm of sport, gender gaps in sport event attendance may be more pronounced in some societies than others, depending on the position women and men have in the particular context in which someone ‘does’ his/her gender. So, in addition to individual attributes, one has to consider the societal, macro-level gender equality in order to understand the individual-level gender inequalities in sport event attendance. Using multilevel analyses on Eurobarometer data (2007), we evaluate whether the size of the gender gap in sport event attendance varies across European Union (EU) countries and how this variation relates to societal gender equality, as measured by the Gender Equality Index of the European Institute for Gender Equality. We find higher male than female attendance in all EU countries, but also conclude that higher levels of macro-level gender equality are associated with smaller gender gaps in sport event attendance.

Ex AnteandEx PostExpectations of Outcome Uncertainty and Baseball Television Viewership

Sporting event attendance is determined by ex ante expectations about the quality of the game, but because changing television channels costs nothing, sporting event viewership is influenced by actual game progression. This implies that demand determinants for televised baseball may change as games progress. This study examined the dynamic relationship between demand for televised baseball games and the uncertainty of outcome hypothesis (UOH). In particular, we analyzed inning-varying coefficients in a television rating regression equation. According to our empirical study, there are large dynamics in TV viewership demand for sports events and the marginal effects of factors on viewership changes significantly as innings progress. The estimation results can be summarized as (1) the UOH was shown to be significant not only statistically but also economically; (2) although ex ante variables were more effective in earlier innings and ex post variables were more effective in later innings, we found that ex ante expectations of outcome uncertainty remain significantly influential in later innings; and (3) after the matchup, the ex ante game quality is the second most significant factor among the examined effects on ratings.

Limited or lasting legacy? The effect of non-mega sport event attendance on participation

Research question: It is often claimed by event promoters that hosting major sports events will inspire increased participation at grass-roots level. However, evidence of this linkage is scarce. This paper addresses the research gap by examining the legacy effect of ‘non-mega’ events on the sport participation levels of those who attend them.Research methods: Data gathered using a combination of face-to-face and online surveys with spectators during and following their attendance at one of nine events, held in England between 2010 and 2012, yielded 434 matched responses.Results and findings: The analysis revealed different types of increases in post-event participation behaviour of both previously active and inactive respondents, including ‘initial’, ‘sustained’ and ‘lagged’ effects. However, attributing causality for these positive changes in activity behaviour to a single event is problematic due to the range of other factors that audiences may experience with the passage of time, including other events.Implications: The key implication of the research for management practice is that major sport events can have a positive market penetration effect but market development effects are as yet unproven.

Using attitude functions, self-efficacy, and norms to predict attitudes and intentions to use mobile devices to access social media during sporting event attendance

The recent years have observed an increased use of social media through mobile devices on different occasions. The present investigation examines why sports spectators use social media (e.g., Facebook and Twitter) while attending sporting events. Based on a cross-sectional survey of 466 participants who generally attended games with friends or family, structural equation modeling analysis revealed that social media use through a mobile device during sporting event attendance served four functions: information-based and game pleasure-based utilitarian functions, an ego-defensive function, and a value-expressive function. The first three functions, descriptive norms, and self-efficacy predicted attitudes toward social media use. When placed within a larger theoretical framework, attitudes, self-efficacy, descriptive norms, and the ego-defensive function predicted intentions to use social media during sporting event attendance. Both theoretical and practical implications are discussed.

Favourite Pew or Box Seat? Sabbath Beliefs as a Barrier to Sporting Event Attendance on Sunday: A Congregational Study

A 10-item Sabbath Beliefs and Practices Scale was administered to 100 respondents as a part of a congregational study designed to investigate how beliefs about the Christian Sabbath influenced sport spectatorship on Sunday. Using a five point Likert-type scale, ranging from 1 (strongly disagree) to 5 (strongly agree) respondents were asked to indicate their strength of agreement with the statements relating to the Christian Sabbath. Key findings included: (1) a strong relationship between belief (that attending a sporting event on Sunday was sinful) and source of belief (the Bible, a church doctrine, personal belief); and (2) a significant difference in Sabbath Belief and Practices Scores as a function of length of membership in the congregation. The results suggest that these congregants would find ways to negotiate religious constraints and attend sporting events on Sunday.

Do fans care about hot dogs? A satisfaction analysis of French ice hockey spectators

The purpose of this research was to identify the contribution of sporting event service attributes to spectator satisfaction in a French ice hockey context. Based on the tetra-class model, the results demonstrated that some service attribute contributions vary upon spectator's team identification whereas some do not. This survey highlighted the prior and non-prior service attributes in order to satisfy spectators, amateurs and fans and reinforced the crucial role of segmentation in sport event attendance analysis.

Security, Perceived Safety, and Event Attendee Enjoyment at the 2003 Rugby World Cup

International sport event organizers around the world have placed considerations of terrorism high on their planning and risk management agendas since September 11, 2001. Increased public awareness about the threat of terrorism and associated safety concerns have led to increased security, especially for large multicountry international events. To date there has been limited empirical research on the relationship between sport event attendance and the impact of terrorism, with the exception of the body of work on the 1972 Olympic Games. In this article the authors outline the extensive antiterrorism security measures taken at the 2003 Rugby World Cup held in Australia. To determine the impact of these measures, event attendees were surveyed to determine the extent to which terrorism influenced event attendees' motivations, perceptions of safety, and level of enjoyment. The results indicate that security measures were perceived as sufficient and attendees were generally not deterred by the threat of terrorism. The heightened security enhanced the event experience for some attendees, with only a small minority reporting a negative impact on satisfaction. Suggestions for further research and practice are discussed.

Fan Characteristics and Sporting Event Attendance: Examining Variance in Attendance

The purpose of this research is to investigate four factors (fan identity salience, satisfaction, attachment, and enduring involvement) to assess their ability to differentiate among three types of fans (frequent, moderately frequent, and infrequent attendees). A convenience sample of college fans of a university woman's basketball team is used. The results suggest both identity salience and enduring involvement may be useful as segmentation variables for sports marketers

Factors Affecting Fan Attendance: The Influence of Identity Salience and Satisfaction

The study combines disparate streams of research in order to develop a model of devoted fan behavior. The theoretical foundations for this study are based on literature examining social identity theory, involvement, attachment and satisfaction. A model of the factors that influence fan identity salience and attendance is developed and tested. First, the factors that influence fan identity salience and sporting event attendance are discussed and an integrated model is developed. Second, the proposed model is tested using a sample of college students. Third, the implications of the findings are discussed. The findings suggest that identity salience is an important factor in explaining fan-related behavior.

Cognitive and Affective Determinants of Fan Satisfaction with Sporting Event Attendance

The current study proposes and tests a structural model of fan satisfaction with attending a sporting event. Specifically, three cognitive antecedents (expectancy disconfirmation, team identificati...