Economic crisis, sport success and willingness to pay: the case of a football club

Abstract

Purpose -The purpose of this paper is to obtain evidence about the scope of the determinants of the willingness to pay (WTP) of the residents in a Spanish city (A Coruña) for keeping a professional football team (Deportivo) competing at the highest level. Apart from the individual socio-demographic characteristics of the respondents and their attitudes as football fans, the authors try to know the influence on the WTP of factors such as the general economic conditions and the plausibility of the team disappearance. Design/methodology/approach -The value of the intangible benefits associated with the team existence is derived from the application of the contingent valuation method (CVM), using two surveys conducted in 2003 and 2012, respectively, with the aim of obtaining information concerning citizens' behaviour and attitudes towards a professional football team. Findings -The consumption of public goods generated by the local football team is relatively inelastic to the sport success and general economic situation, but the value assigned by residents to those goods depends on these factors. Of the two components of the WTP, the non-use value is especially sensitive to changes both in the Spanish economic conditions and in the quality of the public goods generated by the football team. Originality/value -This is the first study that applies the CVM to a football team controlling for both the general economic conditions and the team sport success and, as such, it provides interesting insights into the nature and scope of the determinants of individuals' WTP in a CVM setting.

How Much Are Fans Willing to Pay to Help “Their” Soccer Clubs to Overcome a Crisis? An Analysis of Central European Fans during the COVID-19 Pandemic

“…To test our formal hypothesis H 2 and measure the impact of TI on fans' WTP for (a) fictitious game and (b) merchandise campaign as well as the moderating role of income between TI and both WTP measures, we conducted stepwise hierarchical regression analyses. As gender (Wicker et al 2016) and age (Castellanos Garcia et al 2014) were shown to have an impact on financial support to a sports team, we also controlled for these two variables in our tests. The regression models (Figure 4) were run separately for the fans of small and large clubs.…”

The value of having a first-tier football club in the municipality (even) when tangible benefits are absent

“…A study of the Spanish football club Deportivo revealed that the local population's WTPparticularly non-attendees with little interest in footballwas affected by the economic trends and the club's sporting success (Castellanos et al, 2014). This indicates that citizens' willingness to subsidize may be more pronounced when the economy prospers, and when the club is performing at a high level.…”