Previous studies on sports attendance

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Fans’ categories

Though the majority of researchers used aggregate attendance in their studies some au-thors made distinction between various groups of spectators. The key reason for this distinction is that fan‟s decision to attend a game may be influenced by various factors and thus should be considered separately. Although such separation might lead to more accurate results it is usually neglected as this information is usually unavailable.

 Season-ticket holders vs non-holders.

Forrest and Simmons (2002) admit that fans can be interested just in visiting more ex-citing games but are afraid that they will not be able to purchase a ticket. That is why they have to purchase a season ticket and visit even those games which are not attractive to them. In the same time spectators who prefer single games would be more sensitive to match specific factors.
Allan and Roy (2008) found that season-ticket holders‟ behavior is not affected by game‟s characteristics and is relatively stable throughout the season. Moreover pay-at-gate fans for some reasons can be even more important for the club as they are expected to spend more on merchandizing and catering due to infrequency of visits comparing to season ticket holders.

 Home team vs away team fans

It is obvious that factors affecting attendance are different for home and away specta-tors. Guest fans bear higher costs as they have to spend more money and time on travel. Allan and Roy (2008) admit that visiting fans prefer games with lower win probability of the home team.

 Standing viewers vs seating viewers

This issue is typical for European clubs as arenas in North America usually have only seating accommodation. Terraces (for standing audience) used to be extremely popular in England but after Hillsborough disaster Football Association forced clubs to renovate their stadiums. Nowadays standing seats can be rarely met at soccer arenas though ma-jority of Czech, Finnish and Swedish ice hockey clubs still have terraces as a cheaper option. Dobson and Goddard (1992) came to conclusion that attendance demand for standing and seating accommodation is influenced by different factors. Current team performance, game importance and rivalry have bigger influence on standings while seated is more influenced by club‟s traditions.

Groups of factors

Based on Rottenberg‟s (1956) findings the majority of researchers divided all factors which could influence attendance into four groups: economic aspects, expected quality, opportunity costs and others. Garcia and Rodriguez (2009) also added uncertainty of outcome factors to the model as this issue has become one of the major questions within attendance related studies. Forrest and Simmons (2006) studied attendance in English lower divisions and provided a more complicated model deriving several additional groups of factors:
 Support (previous season attendances, distance between clubs and rivalry)
 Form (recent teams‟ performance)
 Promotion contention (whether both teams are involved in promotion conten-tion during different parts of season)
 Outcome uncertainty
 Television (if any games between best European clubs are televised in the same time)
 Schedule
 Other dummies (month dummies and dummies for teams with greater support)
The only author who studied ice hockey attendance and implemented factors division into groups was Lahvicka (2010). He derived five major groups of variables which are similar to Rottenberg‟s approach:
 Home team and season fixed effects
 Match attributes (team quality/reputation; team form; team rivalry; team fresh-ness/newness; match excitement/uncertainty; seasonal uncertainty; arena quali-ty)
 Economic and demographic factors (ticket price; population; distance between home and away teams)
 Substitution effects and opportunity costs (match day/time; TV broadcast; weather; schedule congestion; substitution with other ice hockey teams; substi-tution with soccer)
In the present paper a similar approach is used as all the factors are divided into five groups: team effect variables, season effect variables, economic variables, match quality variables and variables, which measure opportunity costs.

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Economic factors

Economic factors include those which are typical for any demand model: ticket prices, prices of substitutes, area population where the club is based etc. The major obstacle in calculating price elasticity is that sports clubs set differentiated prices for the same game. Usually it depends on viewing quality (i.e. standing and seated; central lower and upper corner levels etc.) and spectators‟ category (usually there are discounts for stu-dents and seniors). Garcia and Rodriguez (2009) outline several possible solutions for this problem:
 Average ticket price ( e.g. Baimbridge, Cameron & Dowson, 1996)
 Average price of sold tickets (total revenue is divided by the number of tickets sold; e.g. Avgerinou & Giakoumatos, 2009)
 Minimum ticket price (e.g. Garcia & Rodriguez, 2002)
 Weighted average price (takes into account the tickets‟ total number of a cer-tain price category; e.g. Benz, Brandes & Franck, 2009)
De Santana and Da Silva (2009) and Madalozzo and Villar (2009) studies on Brazilian soccer attendance showed that clubs deliberately tend not to maximize profits but make stadiums crowded. They admit that even if a club decides to increase admission price the attendance will decrease slower as demand is inelastic at the point. This can be sup-ported by majority of researchers (e.g. Allan, 2004; Bruggink & Roosma, 2003; Coates & Humphreys, 2007 etc.) who also found demand to be inelastic. Madalozzo and Villar (2009) concluded that even if a club gives 50 per cent discount on ticket prices sales will increase just by 16 per cent. Moreover Simmons (1996) claims that pay-at-gate fans have greater price elasticity comparing to season-ticket holders. Ice hockey clubs also tend to keep demand in inelastic point which was supported by Suominen (2009) and Lahvicka (2010) findings.

1 Introduction 
1.1 Background
1.2. Problem
1.3. Purpose
2. Theoretical framework 
2.1. Direct demand for sports
2.2. Previous studies on sports attendance
2.3. Fans’ categories
2.4. Groups of factors
2.5. Economic factors
2.6. Expected quality
2.7. Uncertainty of outcome
2.8. Opportunity costs and other factors
2.9. Team and season variables
3. Method 
3.1 Data Collection
3.2 Delimitations
3.3 Variables
4. Results
4.1. Attendance .
4.2. Model summary
4.3. Hypothesis testing
5 Analysis and discussion 
5.1. Analysis
5.2. Practical implications
5.3. Contributions
5.4. Further research
6. Conclusions ..
List of references

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Factors influencing attendance of ice hockey games in Sweden

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