The impact of televised football on stadium attendances in English and Spanish league football

Abstract

Since the early 1990s, sports broadcasting has emerged to become an important part of the sports industry. This is particularly important in the case of European football because revenues generated from the sport broadcast market tend to dominate those generated from gate attendance, which has traditionally been the main source of income for football clubs and leagues. In this article, we examine the broadcast regimes of the English Premier League and the Spanish Primera Liga (Liga de Primera Division) and examine the impacts that televising games from these leagues have had on their respective match‐day attendances. We find that, although stadium attendances in both leagues respond to a series of factors in a similar manner, the effects of broadcasting on match‐day attendance vary across the two leagues. We examine the economics issues and policy implications of these findings.

Notes

1. See, for more details, of TV broadcasting rights and football, Solberg, ‘Sports Broadcasting’; Solberg, ‘TV Sports Broadcasting’.

2. Dobson and Goddard, The Economics of Football.

3. The headline figure of £304 was not realized as this included the rights for overseas broadcast, which was not taken up by BskyB (Baimbridge, Cameron, and Dawson, ‘Satellite Television and the Demand for Football’).

4. In 1989, the Spanish Government favoured, for the first time, the emergence of the commercial TV channels in Spain (Ley de la Televisión Privada). As part of this law, two terrestrial broadcasters Antena 3, Tele 5 and a DTH satellite, Canal+ entered in the Spanish TV market. As stated in the discussion, Canal+ used football and in particular, getting the broadcasting rights of Spanish football to improve its position in the Spanish TV sector (see Bonaut, ‘Relación de Necesidad entre Deporte y Televisión’).

5. As was found in http://www.dorna.com/ (Accessed October 22, 2007), Dorna states that ‘this company is the exclusive holder of all commercial and TV rights of the MotoGP World Championship since 1992, and from 2001 also holds the rights of the SX World Championship. The company also participates in the management and marketing of other motorsports events: Spanish Road Racing Championship (CEV), British Superbike Championship (BSB) and Trials World Championships (Indoor and Ooutdoor)’.

6. This agreement has clearly been more beneficial to Canal+ which has extended the number of subscribers to over 1.4 million. See also Ascari and Gagnepain, ‘Spansih Football’.

7. Forrest, Simmons, and Szymanski, ‘Broadcasting, Attendance and the Inefficiency of Cartels’.

8. See Whannel, ‘The Unholy Alliance’.

9. The BBC is a state broadcaster and generates its revenue from licence fee payable by all households with a television. ITV, by contrast, is commercial broadcaster which generates its revenue by selling advertising space during programming. Both broadcasters are able to offer programme to audience with no direct charge.

10. The exclusive acquisition of FAPL matches by BSkyB has through the years attracted the attention of competition authorities in both the UK and Europe. In 1999, the FAPL had to justify the collective selling of its television rights to BSkyB, which foreclosed the involvement of other would‐be broadcasters and maintained BSkyB's monopoly in this market. The Restrictive Practices Court ruled in favour of the league, who argued that collective selling was necessary to maintain competitive balance within the league. Since this ruling, the European Competition Commission has taken steps to abolish the exclusive acquisition of FAPL by BSkyB. In 2007/2008, Setanta, Irish based pay television broadcaster, acquired a portion of FAPL for transmission in the UK.

11. See Buraimo, ‘Stadium Attendance and Television Audience Demand in English League Football’; Buraimo, Simmons and Szymanski (2006) for a review of the finances of English football teams.

12. The introduction of TV in Spain in 1956 clearly affected the economies of football clubs. As an example, the first televised match was Barcelona versus Real Madrid on 15 February 1956 at Nou Camp. Barcelona got 150,000 pesata (less than €1000) for the television rights to this match (see Paramio, Buraimo and Campos, ‘From the Modern to the Postmodern Stadia’). From this time until 1983 when the so called the Law of Third Channel opened the market to other broadcasters, the Spanish public service broadcaster, Television Española (TVE) exercised the monopoly over the football rights which in many cases influenced negatively the rights fees for football clubs.

13. See Ascari and Gagnepain, ‘Spanish Football’; Barajas, El Valor Económico del Fútbol.

14. These negotiations with all clubs forced to LNFP to change their regulations to allow individual football teams to negotiate individually their contracts with broadcasters (Campos, Estrategias de Saneamiento en el Deporte Profesional).

15. See more details on the process and their effects on the economies of football clubs and the competitive balance of Spanish football in http://www.iusport.es (accessed October 22, 2007). This conflict is still under revision by the Spanish judicial system. Going back to 2003, most of the Spanish teams as part of what is known as G‐30 (formed by all 22 clubs in the Second Division plus eight clubs like Mallorca, Celta Vigo, Racing Santander, Osasuna, Valladolid, Recreativo, Rayo Vallecano and Alaves), except the big teams, were forced to sign a new contract with Sogecable with less revenues. This situation has created a profound division between Spanish football clubs who are split between two groups named as G‐30 and G‐12 (which includes, among others, clubs like Real Madrid, Barcelona or Atletico de Madrid). This situation was modified after Mediapro bought the rights of most teams. For example, in June 2006, Mediapro obtained the rights to FC Barcelona for €105m per year for a seven‐year contract (2008 to 2013) and later, in November, obtained got the rights to Real Madrid for 1100m for a seven‐year period. Similarly, Mediapro has bought the rights to other Primera Division teams like Zaragoza, Racing Santander, Athletic Bilbao and Sevilla. However, the revenues for these deals are much lower than with those with Barcelona and Real Madrid.

16. During the 2005/2006 season, Watford, who were places 20 and accrued the smallest share, received 3.6% of the broadcast revenue available to the 20 teams. Manchester United accrued the largest proportion of 6.9%.

17. See Baimbridge, Cameron, and Dawson, ‘Satellite Television and the Demand for Football’

18. Kuypers (The Beautiful Game?) uses a Tobit model which takes into account that the distribution of attendances is truncated and some values of attendance cannot be observed because of the constraining size of some stadia.

19. Forrest, Simmons and Szymanski, ‘Broadcasting, Attendance and the Inefficiency of Cartels’.

20. See García and Rodríguez, ‘The Determinants of Football Match Attendance Revisited’.

21. See Kaempfer and Pacey, ‘Televising College Football’; Fizel and Bennett, ‘The Impact of College Football Telecasts on College Football Attendance’.

22. Borland and Macdonald, ‘Demand for Sport’.

23. See Forrest and Simmons, ‘New Issues in Attendance Demand’.

24. Often in English league football, parts of the stadia are left empty for safety and security, separating the fans of the home and away teams. Therefore, attendances which are at or above 95% of the stadia's capacity are taken to be constrained.

25. See Greene, Econometric Analysis.

26. This is significant at the 5% level.

27. There is likely to be a long‐term dimension to the impact of televised matches on stadium attendance, however, a long‐run time series analysis of several seasons is necessary to assess such long‐term effects.

28. See Buraimo, ‘Stadium Attendance and Television Audience Demand in English League Football’.

29. Fans are needed in the stadium to provide atmosphere and enhance the quality of the product for television, however, televising games causes a reduction in attendances at the stadium.

30. See Forrest, Simmons and Szymanski, ‘Broadcasting, Attendance and the Inefficiency of Cartels’ for a discussion on the inefficiencies of cartel with specific reference to the FAPL.