Attendance at Australian Rules football: A panel study

Attendance of Ice Hockey Matches in the Czech Extraliga

“…The empirical results of these studies are mixed; while Leadley and Zygmont (2006) found that opening a new NHL arena increased attendance by 15-20% (however, this effect wore off after 5-8 years); newly opened stadia (less than three years old) in the study of Borland and Lye (1992) had lower attendance. For Coates and Harrison (2005), stadium capacity was not significant, whereas Borland and Lye (1992) and Dobson and Goddard (1992) found a positive effect of capacity on attendance.…”

“… Another approach is to use the current team positions and numbers of points: Baimbridge et al (1996) and Simmons and Forrest (2005) used dummies for both teams being in the promotion zone or in the relegation zone; Benz et al (2009) employed a dummy variable equal to one if a team was no more than two points behind the current leader and there were at most six rounds until the end of the season.  A more complex approach that treats seasonal uncertainty as a continuous (rather than binary) variable was introduced by Jennett (1984) and later used by others (Borland and Lye 1992;Dobson and Goddard 1992). The approach applied to the uncertainty of winning the championship title 96 works in this way:…”

“…Garcia and Rodriguez (2002) found the same effect for teams no longer able to win the championship title.  All studies utilizing the approach of Jennett found that the higher the seasonal uncertainty (regarding championship or qualification for the finals), the higher the attendance 99 (Jennett 1984;Borland and Lye 1992;Dobson and Goddard 1992).  Once a team is sure to win the competition, its attendance usually increases (Jennett 1984;Dobson and Goddard 1992).…”

“…Another important distinction was made by Borland and Lye (1992), who divided factors affecting match attendance into season-specific (changing every season) and match-specific (changing every match).…”

“…In their model of Australian Rules football attendance, Borland and Lye (1992) included stadium capacity with the following argument: first, bigger stadium capacity may stimulate attendance, because people do not like to crowd together; second, bigger stadia tend to have better amenities. The stadium age was used, for example, by Coates and Harrison (2005) and Leadley and Zygmont (2006).…”