IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/jsf/intjsf/v5y2010i4p268-279.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Week to Week Attendance and Competitive Balance in the National Football League

Author

Listed:
  • Steven Cobb

    (Xavier University)

  • Douglas J. Olberding

    (Xavier University)

Abstract

This paper provides empirical support for the Alchian and Allen “shipping the good apples out” hypothesis. The hypothesis version tested here involves estimating the effect of travel cost on the quality of a weekend trip to Cincinnati, where travel cost is measured by time spent in travel and visit quality is measured by the amount of discretionary spending associated with the trip. Using linear regression analysis on data from race participants in the 2008 Flying Pig marathon and half marathon races, strong and robust evidence is found to support the validity of this hypothesis. Specifically, travel distance does indeed have a statistically significant positive but diminishing (with distance traveled) impact on discretionary spending for both marathon and half-marathon participants. The results provide support for this proposition, a variant of the “shipping the good apples out” hypothesis, and add empirical support to the diverse but relatively limited literature on this subject.

Suggested Citation

  • Steven Cobb & Douglas J. Olberding, 2010. "Week to Week Attendance and Competitive Balance in the National Football League," International Journal of Sport Finance, Fitness Information Technology, vol. 5(4), pages 268-279, November.
  • Handle: RePEc:jsf:intjsf:v:5:y:2010:i:4:p:268-279
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.fitinfotech.com/IJSF/IJSFbackissueWVU.tpl
    Download Restriction: Full-text download requires subscription from FIT.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Alchian-Allen; sport tourism; marathons; economic impact;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • L83 - Industrial Organization - - Industry Studies: Services - - - Sports; Gambling; Restaurants; Recreation; Tourism

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:jsf:intjsf:v:5:y:2010:i:4:p:268-279. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Victor Matheson (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.fitinfotech.com/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.