Munich Personal RePEc Archive Attendance of ice hockey matches in the Czech Extraliga Lahvicka, Jiri 21 December 2010 Online at https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/27653/ MPRA Paper No. 27653, posted 22 Dec 2010 20:44 UTC ATTENDANCE OF ICE HOCKEY MATCHES IN THE CZECH EXTRALIGA BY JI LAHVI KA ŘÍ Č E-mail: [email protected] Postal address: Ji Lahvi ka, n m. Ji ho z Lobkovic 16, Praha 3, 130 00, Czech Republic ří č á ří This paper uses data about 3,640 matches played in the seasons 2000/01-2009/10 to explain individual match attendance of the top Czech ice hockey competition the Extraliga. Some interesting results are that fans decide whether to attend based on the detailed information about the home team, but use just the easily observable information about the– away team; that a match having no impact on the final season outcome is much less attended; that televising a match decreases attendances of all matches played on the same day, but there is no negative next-day effect; that both very good and very bad weather decreases attendance; and that if two home matches are played in a short time period, their attendance is lower with likely higher impact on the second match. Substitution of ice hockey with soccer is investigated on several different levels while ice hockey and soccer are definitely long-term substitutes, there are mixed results for same- day substitution. Modernization of ice hockey arenas is identified as the key factor behind the – almost 20% attendance growth in the analyzed period. This paper also presents a new realistic method of modeling seasonal uncertainty based on Monte Carlo simulation that does not rely on ex post information. Keywords: attendance demand; ice hockey; Czech Republic; seasonal uncertainty; Monte Carlo JEL classification: C15; D12; L83 Last revision: December 21st, 2010 The author would like to tha their helpful suggestions. This paper was also submitted as the master s thesis at the University of Economics, Prague, Czech Republic.nk Peter Bolcha, Renata Ivanova, Petr Lubojacký, and Jan Zouhar for ’ i CONTENTS 1 Introduction ....................................................................................................................................................................... 1 2 Overview of the Czech ice hockey Extraliga ......................................................................................................... 3 3 Dataset description ......................................................................................................................................................... 5 4 Model .................................................................................................................................................................................... 9 5 Variables........................................................................................................................................................................... 12 5.1 Dependent variable: match attendance ..................................................................................................... 12 5.2 Home team fixed effects ................................................................................................................................... 13 5.3 Season fixed effects ............................................................................................................................................ 14 5.4 Match attributes .................................................................................................................................................. 14 5.4.1 Team quality/reputation ....................................................................................................................... 15 5.4.2 Team form .................................................................................................................................................... 19 5.4.3 Team rivalry ................................................................................................................................................ 22 5.4.4 Team freshness/newness ...................................................................................................................... 23 5.4.5 Match excitement/uncertainty ............................................................................................................ 24 5.4.6 Seasonal uncertainty ............................................................................................................................... 26 5.4.7 Arena quality ............................................................................................................................................... 37 5.5 Economic and demographic factors ............................................................................................................ 39 5.5.1 Ticket price .................................................................................................................................................. 39 5.5.2 Population .................................................................................................................................................... 42 5.5.3 Distance ......................................................................................................................................................... 44 5.6 Substitution effects and opportunity costs .............................................................................................. 45 5.6.1 Match day/time .......................................................................................................................................... 45 5.6.2 TV broadcast ............................................................................................................................................... 47 5.6.3 Weather ......................................................................................................................................................... 49 5.6.4 Schedule congestion................................................................................................................................. 50 5.6.5 Substitution with other ice hockey teams ...................................................................................... 52 5.6.6 Substitution with soccer......................................................................................................................... 53 5.7 Omitted variables ............................................................................................................................................... 56 6 Estimation method ...................................................................................................................................................... 59 7 Results ............................................................................................................................................................................... 61 7.1 Home team & season fixed effects ............................................................................................................... 62 7.2 Match attributes .................................................................................................................................................. 64 ii 7.3 Economic and demographic factors ............................................................................................................ 69 7.4 Substitution effects and opportunity costs .............................................................................................. 72 7.5 Attendance trend decomposition................................................................................................................. 74 8 Conclusion ....................................................................................................................................................................... 79 Data sources ............................................................................................................................................................................. 81 References ................................................................................................................................................................................. 83 Appendix A: Additional descriptive statistics ............................................................................................................ 85 Appendix B: Complete estimation results.................................................................................................................... 89 Appendix C: Complete attendance trend decomposition ...................................................................................... 92 List of tables ............................................................................................................................................................................. 95 List of figures ........................................................................................................................................................................... 96 iii 1 INTRODUCTION Ice hockey is (along with soccer) the most popular sport in the Czech Republic.1 While there are many papers analyzing sports attendance demand, most of them have focused on sports popular in England and the United States soccer,2 American football, baseball, and basketball.3 Therefore, ice hockey (especially European) has been largely neglected.4 – This paper uses a massive dataset