Betting market prices, outcome uncertainty, and hockey attendance in Russia, Sweden, and Finland

Abstract

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to use financial market prices formed in betting markets as a measure of uncertainty of outcome and other factors as it relates to hockey attendance in three top European leagues, the KHL, SHL, and Liiga. This is the first study of European hockey to use betting market odds to estimate the impact of home team win probability and uncertainty of outcome on attendance. Design/methodology/approach The design of this study is a multivariate regression model with log of attendance and percentage of arena capacity as dependent variables in two separate regressions. Controlling for other factors, the role of the home team win probability and its square are explored for individual game attendance. Findings Fans of the KHL and SHL are found to prefer to see their home team win, but also exhibit strong preferences for uncertainty of outcome. Fans of Liiga prefer to see the home team win, but do not exhibit as strong a preference for uncertainty of outcome. This differs from recent findings in the sport of baseball and from previous findings for the NHL. Practical implications Having a competitive league is not only important for television ratings, but also for in-person attendance in these European hockey leagues. Importance of uncertainty of outcome varies across leagues. Originality/value The paper uses financial market prices, betting market odds, as a measure of game expectations (home team win probability) and uncertainty of outcome and applies it to a new setting for three of the top European hockey leagues. The findings illustrate that uncertainty of outcome is important for the KHL and SHL, but statistically insignificant for Liiga.

Stadium Attendance Demand Research: A Scoping Review

“…In fact, only a few authors were primarily interested in analyzing alternative attendance demand proxies such as the stadium utilization (i.e., the ratio of distributed tickets to the existing stadium capacity; e.g. Hong et al, 2013; Jane, 2016; Lawson et al, 2008) or a rather simple sellout-dummy (e.g., Brandes et al, 2013), although some authors used the former information to present an additional robustness check (e.g., Paul et al, 2016).…”

“…In sum, our data set contains 195 published manuscripts on 2,918 pages. 8 However, as some authors (e.g., Paul et al, 2016; Pawlowski & Nalbantis, 2015; Tyler et al, 2017), modeled the attendances of more than one league, 9 we decided to include these studies separately if authors had made separate regressions available for these different leagues. Therefore, to be more precise, our final data set contains 235 empirical contributions/studies in 195 manuscripts.…”

“… 10. Here, perhaps it is worth noting that we refrain from excluding manuscripts based on, for example, disciplines. As such, besides contributions from the field of both sports economics and sports management, our data set also contains manuscripts that were published in journals in fields as diverse as accounting and finance (e.g., Paul et al, 2016), applied geography (Griffith, 2010), management science (Kappe et al, 2014), operational research (e.g., Goller & Krumer, 2020), and statistics (e.g., Hart et al, 1975). …”

Guest editorial

“…Articles 1 and 6 (Paul et al, 2016;Brook, 2016) consider the subtle relationships between team performance, fan interest, and revenues in sport. These studies highlight the related roles of outcome uncertainty and home team performance in promoting game attendance.…”

“…Sponsorships revenues also have the potential to eclipse gate revenues in magnitude within the coming decade.The trends of increasing importance and complexity have important implications upon sports betting markets, viewership, and ticket pricing, collective bargaining agreements between players and owners, stadium financing arrangements, tournament bidding processes, and the relationship between performance and revenues.This Special Issue seeks to address several of the most important issues in contemporary sport. Articles 1 and 6 (Paul et al, 2016;Brook, 2016) consider the subtle relationships between team performance, fan interest, and revenues in sport. These studies highlight the related roles of outcome uncertainty and home team performance in promoting game attendance.…”