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ABSTRACT
Research question: A growing number of studies of professional team sports have tried to understand the drivers behind match-day attendance. However, no research has ever been conducted in relation to team handball. As existing literature mainly focuses on European football and US Major League sports, club managers from smaller sports lack the evidence that could assist them in developing strategies to increase attendance. This study is a step toward filling this gap.
Research methods: Using robust panel data regression models deployed on data from Danish men’s team handball league matches in the seasons from 2011/12 to 2015/16, the study identifies the main determinants of spectator demand.
Results and findings: The findings are largely consistent with existing research, but also reveal new insights that seem to be specific to handball. These include (1) negative effects on spectator demand due to simultaneous live television coverage of other league matches; (2) no obvious preferences for weekend matches and (3) weather-related factors, whereby rain has a positive effect and snow a negative effect, while variations in temperature have no effect.
Implications: To maximize spectator attendance, we suggest that league managers and club representatives take the problem of simultaneous broadcasts from other league matches into consideration when planning the schedule in the future. Further, we argue that games should be placed in the time slots with highest spectator demand while recognizing that this can be club-specific. Finally, we recommend that clubs increase their efforts in promoting games involving strong away teams.
Acknowledgements
The paper is a significant reworking of the results previously presented in a Danish policy report on spectator demand in Danish handball, which was commissioned by the Danish handball league association. We would like to thank the editor, Professor Paul Downward and the two anonymous reviewers of this paper for their valuable comments on earlier drafts. They have really benefited our work.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
Notes
1. In the seasons 2011/12–2013/14 the teams ranked from 9 to 13 participated in a group phase/playoff to avoid relegation. This was changed in the season 2014/15.
2. Due to the limited space provided for the paper, we have chosen to focus only on men’s handball here.
3. Please note that some of the clubs play their home games at more than one arena. In total, 25 arenas have been used by the 20 clubs included in the study.
4. We have also tested other model specifications not presented in this paper. This is for robustness, to identify which variables are consistently significant under different model specifications. Additional models not presented here include random effects, pooled OLS, and Tobit models. The results of these were consistent with the models reported in our paper and are available upon request. A Hausman test indicates that fixed effects are preferred over random effects.
5. Our additional dyadic models (home/away team) show no significant effect for TV2, SECONDARY and CLASH SECONDARY, and a negative significant effect (at the 1% level) of CLASH TV2. The dyadic models deal with the issue of selection effect of which matches are televised. However, it is not an optimal way of modelling our data due to the relatively short time period under investigation. Thus, they are not part of our main modelling approach.