Demand for public events in the COVID-19 pandemic: a case study of European football

ABSTRACT

Research question

This study looks at stadium attendances in elite-level European football, to suggest how people responded to the initial COVID-19 outbreak. This offers insight into how professional sports will emerge from social lockdowns and competition taking place behind closed doors.

Research methods

The analysis focuses on the top leagues of England, Italy, France, Spain and Germany. Using panel data methods and exploiting the variation in day-to-day attendances in these leagues, the impacts on implied spectator demand from the news of confirmed COVID-19 cases and deaths can be quantified.

Results and Findings

In Italy, England and Germany, stadium attendances were negatively affected by the previous day's newly confirmed domestic cases or deaths. In Spain and France, there was no attendance response to the early stages of the domestic outbreaks.

Implications

COVID-19 was affecting football match spectator demand before European countries enforced lockdowns and other restrictions to suppress the spread of the disease. This suggests that fans significantly responded to the risk of catching the virus. If this risk remains when stadiums reopen, then sports organisations should expect reduced ticket demand. This suggests that managers should adopt more dynamic and creative pricing strategies, and use their stadiums in more innovative ways, if they are to survive financially in a world where COVID-19 remains a threat to public health.

KEYWORDS:

• Demand for sport
• stadium attendance
• coronavirus
• European economy
• public health

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank Antonio Cabrales, Marina Della Giusta, Brad Humphreys, Daniel Parnell, Rachel Scarfe, Daniel Schaefer, Dominik Schreyer and Paul Telemo for helpful comments, as well as participants in the Reading Online Sport Seminars in March 2020.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Source: COVID-19 Dashboard by the Center for Systems Science and Engineering (CSSE) at Johns Hopkins University; https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/map.html.

2 See for example the IMF World Economic Outlook, April 2020; https://www.imf.org/en/Publications/WEO/Issues/2020/04/14/weo-april-2020.

3 For example, see the Nielsen World Football Report, 2018; https://www.nielsen.com/uk/en/insights/report/2018/world-football-report/.

4 Indeed, it has been suggested that a match between Atalanta B.C. and Valencia CF on 19th February 2020 was ground zero for the spread of the virus in Spain as well as in Italy; see https://rep.repubblica.it/pwa/generale/2020/03/20/news.

5 Elo ratings, originally proposed by Elo (1978) for chess players, are commonly used to estimate the relative strengths of football teams, both in practical applications (e.g. https://www.eloratings.net/) and in academic research (e.g. Hvattum & Arntzen, 2010). See either of these sources for the mathematical details.

6 A modified Breusch-Pagan test, where the squared residuals from the second step, Equation (2(2) $\mathrm{\Delta }{\hat{d}}_t=\gamma +{\lambda }_{1}NewDomesti{c}_t+{\lambda }_{2}NewWorldwid{e}_t+{\varphi }^{\mathrm{\prime }}{\mathbf{D}}_t+{\zeta }_t$(2) ), are regressed on the inverse of the number of matches per match day, returns non-significant coefficient estimates for all countries ($p-\mathrm{v}\mathrm{a}\mathrm{l}\mathrm{u}\mathrm{e}>0.1$). Regardless, when estimated using weighted least squares, with the number of matches per match day as weights, all our main results are qualitatively unchanged (results available on request).

7 Teams only qualify for the UEFA Europa League by finishing in positions 5 and 6 if the winners of the two domestic cup competitions finished in the top four positions. There was a high likelihood in February and March of the 2019/20 season, that the dominant league leaders Paris Saint Germain F.C. would go on to win the two domestic cup competitions, which subsequently happened.

8 The over-reporting of football stadium attendances has been widely reported in the media. (e.g. Ian Thomson in the Guardian, September 2017, “Football clubs should stop exaggerating their attendance figures”; https://www.theguardian.com/football/2017/sep/28/football-clubs-leagues-attendance-figures-arsenal-celtic-mls).

9 The data used here from Germany frequently report round attendance numbers that reflect stadium capacities, such as 75,000 for Bayern Munich in practically every home game, and this tendency is more frequent than in the data from other countries.

10 For example, the UK Prime Minister boasted of continuing to shake hands on 3rd March 2020 and was observed doing so on 9th March 2020; see The Guardian, 5th May 2020: https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2020/may/05/boris-johnson-boasted-of-shaking-hands-on-day-sage-warned-not-to.

11 See the Deloitte Football Money League 2020 report for estimates of the dependence of top European football clubs on gate receipts and related revenues; https://www2.deloitte.com/bg/en/pages/finance/articles/football-money-league-2020.html.

12 This research was presented at the Reading Online Sport Economics Seminars (ROSES) on 17 April 2020. See here for a public recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=4006&v=viPqe93rW2c&feature=emb_logo.

13 BBC Sport, 22nd May 2020: https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/52680375.