Dynamic ticket pricing and the impact of time – an analysis of price paths of the English soccer club Derby County

ABSTRACT

Research question: Empirical studies about dynamic ticket pricing (DTP) in sports to date have focused exclusively on the Major League Baseball and on analyzing dynamic ticket prices based on a limited number of points in time. The current study extends the literature by examining the impact of time over the whole selling period. Furthermore, the presented study is the first to analyze a dynamic pricing system of a football club in Europe.

Research methods: Ticket prices for selected games of the English football club Derby County were collected daily during the 2013/2014 season. A data set of 5862 price points was analyzed by means of a hedonic pricing regression.

Results and findings: The model suggests that time has a significant effect on dynamic ticket prices. Ticket prices increased monotonously over time. This finding is consistent with previous research on dynamic pricing in sports. However, the pricing system can be differentiated from models applied in the airline or the hotel industry.

Implications: The current study extends the existing literature by analyzing the effect of time in the context of DTP. Sport managers can apply these findings concerning the specification of a more sophisticated pricing approach.

KEYWORDS:

• Dynamic ticket pricing
• sport demand
• professional team sports
• hedonic pricing model

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Christoph Kemper is researcher in the Department of Sport Economics and Sport Management at German Sport University Cologne. His research interests include pricing strategies, willingness to pay, and statistical modelling.

Christoph Breuer, PhD, is a professor in the Department of Sport Economics and Sport Management at German Sport University Cologne. His research interests include sport organizational economics and economics of sponsoring.

Notes

1. Here “myopic” means that the customer does not anticipate price changes in the future. Hence, she or he does not show strategic customer behavior.