Athlete activism and attendance behavior in the National Football League

ABSTRACT

Research Question

There is a growing body of research focused on athlete activism and social movements in the sport literature. One lineage of research examined consumer perceptions and reactions to these movements. Such discussions, however, generally concentrate on detecting changes in consumer behaviors rather than understanding the nuance in those changing behaviors. The present study advances the literature by considering how two potential factors – the size of protests and the geographic proximity consumers have to a protest – impact attendance at NFL games.

Research Methods

The present study utilizes social protests carried out by professional American football players in 2016–2017 to measure the number of workers who participated in the protests. Specifically, estimations of Tobit and fixed-effects regressions from 1003 games examine whether protests conducted by NFL players impact attendance in local markets.

Results and Findings

Findings from all estimated models suggest that as the number of players who participated in the protests increased, there was a decline in NFL attendance. Moreover, consumers were sensitive only to protests occurring within their own local market, indicating consumers tended to react to protests for teams located in the same city.

Implications

Scholars argue that for social movements to be successful in disrupting organizations, many participants are needed. In response to this point, the present research extends the research in sport-based social movements by developing further understanding of how they impact consumer behaviors, and thus affect the management of sport organizations.

KEYWORDS:

• Protests
• social movements
• market disruption
• demand for sport
• athlete activism

Disclosure statement

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

Notes

1 We also estimated additional variations of the fixed-effect and Tobit regressions including ones that removed the interaction terms from the model. Overall, the results held consistent for most variables of interest. Thus, we limited our focus to the models presented.