Are spectator preferences weaker for cup compared to league competitions? Evidence from Irish soccer

ABSTRACT

This paper exploits data from eight recent playing seasons to examine the spectator appeal for League of Ireland fans of the national soccer challenge cup competition (the FAI cup). The study finds a sizable spectator attendance penalty for Premier Division clubs in FAI cup games for the earlier rounds of the tournament compared to league fixtures against the same opposition. However, this is reversed by the penultimate stage of the tournament. The policy implications of these findings are discussed.

KEYWORDS:

• Soccer
• demand
• cup
• competition

JEL CLASSIFICATION:

• D12
• L83

Acknowledgments

The authors acknowledge with gratitude the constructive comments of a referee for this journal. Latifat Olasubomi Are and Stephen Byrne are thanked for providing research assistance. The comments of Robbie Butler on an earlier draft are also acknowledged. However, the authors remain solely responsible for any remaining errors.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

¹. Kendall. et al. (2010) review an array of technical issues associated with fixture scheduling and Goosens and Spieksma (2012) provide a detailed survey of scheduling approaches across 25 European soccer leagues. In addition, Wang, Goossens, and Vandebroek (2018), using survey-based discrete choice experimental data, investigate the sensitivity of Belgian soccer fan preferences with respect to a variety of scheduling options.

². In the newly introduced 10-team league format, each team plays the same number of games at home as away thus yielding a perfectly balanced schedule. The preceding 12-team format used a triple round-robin arrangement, which was also ‘balanced’ under the definition of Knust and Thaden (2006) given the number of home and away games played differed by no more than one.

³. Aside from the potential attendance penalty associated with scheduling fixtures on non-traditional match days, Goller and Krumer (2020) also report a reduced home advantage for ‘underdog’ teams playing on such days in the top soccer tiers of England, Germany, Spain and France.

⁴. Given the logarithmic nature of the dependent variable this dummy variable effect is computed as [e^{–0.0991 –} 1]×100 = – 9.4% using the relevant estimate from column (2) of Table 3. Similar computations are undertaken for comparable effects discussed elsewhere in the text.

⁵. It is acknowledged that the quality of the estimated prediction errors is contingent on an adequately specified regression model. In general, the estimates obtained are well determined and the model fit satisfactory on the basis of the ‘within-R^2ʹ value. The fact that the averages of the prediction errors for the different rounds of the cup competition closely approximates the corresponding estimates obtained from specification (2) in Table 3 is also re-assuring. Nevertheless, the key contribution offered by the exercise is illustrative in nature with Figure 1 primarily used to convey the heterogeneous pattern of the point estimates across the different cup rounds.

⁶. The decision to schedule cup ties in this fashion would have to be made by league and FAI administrators and could not be exercised independently by clubs. One concern associated with such a proposal is the potential implication for the participation of non-league clubs in the competition. However, given earlier rounds are generally played in August, an evening mid-week fixture would not disadvantage non-league clubs drawn at home as an absence of floodlighting does not present as an issue during the summer months.

⁷. It is envisaged that gate-sharing arrangements would not apply under a two-legged semi-final. A win at this stage permits progress to the final where the ultimate winner has the opportunity to compete in the following season’s financially lucrative Europa League competition. Therefore, the stakes are relatively high, so a two-legged tie would introduce a greater degree of fairness at the penultimate stage of the competition. There is the possibility that an extreme result in the first leg renders the second a potential ‘dead-rubber’ with implications for attendance. This is acknowledged but viewed as a tail-risk since semi-final ties invariably tend to be close contests.