Title: Market size and attendance in English Premier League football

Authors: Babatunde Buraimo, Rob Simmons

Addresses: School of Sport, Tourism and The Outdoors, University of Central Lancashire, Preston, PR1 2HE, UK. ' Department of Economics, Lancaster University Management School, Lancaster, LA1 4YX, UK

Abstract: This paper models the impacts of market size and team competition for fan base on matchday attendance in the English Premier League over the period 1997-2004 using a large panel dataset. The authors construct a comprehensive set of control variables and use Tobit estimation to overcome the problems caused by sell-out crowds. The authors also account for unobserved influences on attendance by means of random effects attached to home teams. The authors| treatment of market size, with its use of geographical information system (GIS) techniques, is more sophisticated than in previous attendance demand studies.

Keywords: professional sport; market size; demand; football attendance; English Premier League; soccer; team competition; fan base; matchday attendance; Tobit estimation; geographical information systems; GIS.

DOI: 10.1504/IJSMM.2009.028802

International Journal of Sport Management and Marketing, 2009 Vol.6 No.2, pp.200 - 214

Published online: 30 Sep 2009 *

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