The demand for women's league soccer in Germany

ABSTRACT

Research question: Given growing skepticism regarding the future of women's soccer in Germany, research presented here aims to fill a gap in research and explores demand functions for the German women's top division, the Frauen-Bundesliga (FBL).

Research methods: FBL attendance data for 1848 matches from the seasons 1998/1999 to 2011/2012 are analyzed by employing fixed effects panel regressions.

Results and findings: Aggregate attendance has increased substantially over the period examined. However, there is no continuous growth of attendance at the club level. Consumers’ loyalty appears to play a dominant role for FBL attendance but consumer demand responds to the quality of the involved teams, the relevance of matches for championship outcomes as well as costs and weather conditions. Host site characteristics appear to play a minor role. Moreover, women's soccer might represent an inferior good. While national team performance does not affect league attendance, the more aggressive marketing strategy for the home World Cup in 2011 might have served to create a short-term boost in attendance.

Implications: More aggressive marketing strategies might be able to increase attendance. However, given the dominant role of habit persistence for FBL attendance, such marketing strategies have to be accompanied by efforts of FBL teams to build and expand a sustainable fan base.

KEYWORDS:

• Women's soccer
• Germany
• attendance data
• marketing strategies
• fixed effects panel regression

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. Thus, Turbine Potsdam – multiple national champion and European Champions League winner – charges 8 Euros per match ticket and 69 Euros for a season ticket (Turbine Potsdam, 2014).

2. Seven titles were won by 1. FCC Frankfurt, six by Turbine Potsdam and one each by FCR Duisburg 55 and VfL Wolfsburg.

3. The measure UR was based on the simple idea that relegation is more likely the smaller the difference between the potential number of points, which can be still won by a team at a certain match day (c_max − 3t), on the one side and the number of points necessary to avoid relegation (c_R) minus the number of points already gained (g). UR equals 100 if the team is unable to avoid relegation ((c_max – 3t) < (c_R − g)) and zero if a team has already gained enough points in order to avoid relegation (c_R < g). However, a problem occurred in four cases where the number of points needed to avoid relegation equaled exactly the number of points to be potentially won ((c_max − 3t) = (c_R − g)). Since in that case, relegation is very likely, the value for UR was slightly arbitrarily defined as 75 in these cases: