In recent years the National Hockey League (NHL) has put policies in place to boost attendance. Specifically, these changes have been to curb violence, increase scoring, and move to an unbalanced schedule featuring more games against regional rivals. This research looks at variations in game-to-game attendance in the NHL, focusing on these policy changes. It is found that violence, specifically fighting, tends to attract fans in large numbers across the United States and Canada. Surprisingly, increases in scoring, "ceteris paribus", tend to depress attendance. The change in scheduling by the NHL, however, has been a success, with divisional rivals increasing attendance in U.S. cities and additional contests against other Canadian teams increasing attendance in Canada. Copyright 2003 American Journal of Economics and Sociology, Inc..
Download Info
To download:
If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the
proper application to
view it first. Information about this may be contained
in the File-Format links below. In case of further problems read
the IDEAS help
page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS
site. Please be patient as the files may be large.
As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to look for a different version under "Related research" (further below) or search for a different version of it.
For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its listing, contact: (Christopher F. Baum).
Related research
Keywords:
Cited by: (explanations, Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.)
Evan Osborne, 2008.
"Rivalries,"
Working Papers
0808, International Association of Sports Economists.
[Downloadable!]