The effect of sporting success and management failure on attendance demand in the Bundesliga: a revealed and stated preference travel cost approach

ABSTRACT

This study examines the private consumption benefits of sports attendance using revealed and stated preference data from 28 Football Bundesliga teams across three divisions. Survey respondents were presented with positive (sporting success) and negative (management failure) scenarios and asked for the number of game trips if each scenario occurred. The results of a pooled random effects Poisson model show that travel costs and ticket price have a significant negative effect on the number of home game trips. The weighted consumer surplus per game trip including travel costs and ticket prices is €345. Consumer surplus per game trip was found to change by €41 (first division) and €98 (second and third division) if the positive scenario occurred and by €39 if the negative scenario occurred.

KEYWORDS:

• Contingent behaviour method
• travel cost method
• attendance demand
• consumer surplus
• Bundesliga
• Soccer

JEL CLASSIFICATION:

• Z29
• L83
• R22
• D61

Acknowledgements

A previous version of this article was presented in a NAASE session at the 2015 SEA Conference in New Orleans, LA, November 2015. The authors would like to thank the students who assisted with the data collection for this project. These are Magnus Metz, Jonas Resch, Ioannis Foukis, Friedrich Mahle, Yogev Cohen, Christian Saur, Stefan Fink, Florian Deitermann, Fabian Schuler, Julian Schöneborn, Annika Hentschel, Tobias Freudenthal, Dennis Lichtenwimmer, Frederic Goller, Nicolaus von Schultzendorff, Stephanie Fuchs, Philipp Beuers, Michael Piechulla, Kevin Sonneveld, Max Eylmanns, Nermin Mujezinovic, Gavin Sexton, Stefan Ernst, Elisabeth Schädlich, Jan Tulke, Frederik Schnock, and Ryan Viehrig.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This research received no funding.