Socio-economic factors that affect the demand for tickets in all Brazilian League tiers

Abstract

The influence of socio-economic factors on the demand for football is under-investigated. This paper aims to offer evidence about the effects of socio-economic factors and historical success of clubs in the demand for tickets in all Brazilian League tiers. All football clubs that have participated at least once in one of the four Brazilian League Divisions from seasons 2013 to 2015 have been analyzed. The econometric approach consists of panel data ordinary least squares (OLS) regressions. Interaction terms are included to see the effect of historical success and socio-economic factors in different divisions. As a methodological contribution, an index to measure the historical success of clubs has been developed. This indicator evidences that successful clubs in the past are still driving fans attention together with current performance, increasing then seasonal attendance rates. Finally, this paper offers evidence that higher socio-economic indicators play an important role in attracting fans at lower levels as well.

Keywords:

• Football
• socio-economic factors
• Human Development Index

Acknowledgements

This paper is an output of a research project implemented as part of the Basic Research Program at the National Research University Higher School of Economics (HSE).

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. It does not include manipulation or bankruptcy cases as such happened in Italy and UK recently, for example.

2. UNPD (United Nations Development Program). (2018) Human Development Indices and Indicators: 2018 Statistical Update. Retrieved from http://hdr.undp.org/sites/default/files/2018_human_development_statistical_update.pdf.

3. The position of each team in the Clubs’ Ranking made by the Brazilian Football Confederation (CBF) is taken as a proxy of teams’ quality. The values shown before each season are used.

4. Unfortunately, there is no information about all 302 clubs fan bases included in the analysis. Then, the city population – previously employed by Buraimo, Forrest, and Simmons (2007) and Barajas and Rodríguez (2010) – would represent the better available proxy of their market size for this paper.