IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/sae/jospec/v22y2021i5p514-545.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The Effect of League Design on Spectator Attendance: A Regression Discontinuity Design Approach

Author

Listed:
  • Barry Reilly
  • Robert Witt

Abstract

This paper exploits a sharp regression discontinuity design to identify the causal impact of the Scottish Premiership League (SPL) “split†on spectator match attendance. We use data drawn from all 19 completed seasons for which this institutional arrangement has been in place. The causal effect of the “split†is to induce, for the last five rounds of games played in the season, a differential in average attendance of about 24% between the clubs that just qualify for the “Championship Play-off†section and those that do not. However, the annualized effect for the season is found to be modest.

Suggested Citation

  • Barry Reilly & Robert Witt, 2021. "The Effect of League Design on Spectator Attendance: A Regression Discontinuity Design Approach," Journal of Sports Economics, , vol. 22(5), pages 514-545, June.
    • Handle: RePEc:sae:jospec:v:22:y:2021:i:5:p:514-545
    DOI: 10.1177/1527002521989393
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1527002521989393
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1177/1527002521989393?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Romain Gauriot & Lionel Page, 2019. "Fooled by Performance Randomness: Overrewarding Luck," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 101(4), pages 658-666, October.
    2. Walter C. Neale, 1964. "The Peculiar Economics of Professional Sports," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 78(1), pages 1-14.
    3. David S. Lee & Thomas Lemieux, 2010. "Regression Discontinuity Designs in Economics," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 48(2), pages 281-355, June.
    4. Lee Yoong Hon & Rasyad A. Parinduri, 2016. "Does the Three-Point Rule Make Soccer More Exciting? Evidence From a Regression Discontinuity Design," Journal of Sports Economics, , vol. 17(4), pages 377-395, May.
    5. Brachert, Matthias, 2020. "Regional effects of professional sports franchises: causal evidence from four European football leagues," EconStor Open Access Articles and Book Chapters, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, issue Latest Ar, pages 1-12.
    6. Andrew Gelman & Guido Imbens, 2019. "Why High-Order Polynomials Should Not Be Used in Regression Discontinuity Designs," Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 37(3), pages 447-456, July.
    7. Marc Brechot & Raphael Flepp, 2018. "Dealing with randomness in match outcomes: how to rethink performance evaluation and decision-making in European club football," Working Papers 374, University of Zurich, Department of Business Administration (IBW).
    8. Michal Kolesár & Christoph Rothe, 2018. "Inference in Regression Discontinuity Designs with a Discrete Running Variable," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 108(8), pages 2277-2304, August.
    9. Simon Rottenberg, 1956. "The Baseball Players' Labor Market," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 64(3), pages 242-242.
    10. Gauriot, Romain & Page, Lionel, 2018. "Fooled by randomness: over-rewarding luck," Working Papers 2018-03, University of Sydney, School of Economics.
    11. Peel, David A & Thomas, Dennis A, 1992. "The Demand for Football: Some Evidence on Outcome Uncertainty," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 17(2), pages 323-331.
    12. Jonah Berger & Devin Pope, 2011. "Can Losing Lead to Winning?," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 57(5), pages 817-827, May.
    13. Marc Brechot & Raphael Flepp, 2020. "Dealing With Randomness in Match Outcomes: How to Rethink Performance Evaluation in European Club Football Using Expected Goals," Journal of Sports Economics, , vol. 21(4), pages 335-362, May.
    14. Peter J. Sloane, 2015. "The Economics of Professional Football Revisited," Scottish Journal of Political Economy, Scottish Economic Society, vol. 62(1), pages 1-7, February.
    15. Ariella Kahn-Lang & Kevin Lang, 2020. "The Promise and Pitfalls of Differences-in-Differences: Reflections on 16 and Pregnant and Other Applications," Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 38(3), pages 613-620, July.
    16. Grant Allan & Graeme Roy, 2008. "Does Television Crowd Out Spectators?," Journal of Sports Economics, , vol. 9(6), pages 592-605, December.
    17. Stefan Szymanski, 2010. "The Economic Design of Sporting Contests," Palgrave Macmillan Books, in: The Comparative Economics of Sport, chapter 1, pages 1-78, Palgrave Macmillan.
    18. Quinn A. W. Keefer, 2016. "Rank-Based Groupings and Decision Making," Journal of Sports Economics, , vol. 17(7), pages 748-762, October.
    19. Barry Reilly, 2015. "The Demand for League of Ireland Football," The Economic and Social Review, Economic and Social Studies, vol. 46(4), pages 485-509.
    20. Thomas D. Cook & William R. Shadish & Vivian C. Wong, 2008. "Three conditions under which experiments and observational studies produce comparable causal estimates: New findings from within-study comparisons," Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 27(4), pages 724-750.
    21. Jennett, Nicholas I, 1984. "Attendances, Uncertainty of Outcome and Policy in Scottish League Football," Scottish Journal of Political Economy, Scottish Economic Society, vol. 31(2), pages 176-198, June.
    22. A. Colin Cameron & Douglas L. Miller, 2015. "A Practitioner’s Guide to Cluster-Robust Inference," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 50(2), pages 317-372.
    23. Liam J. A. Lenten, 2008. "Unbalanced Schedules And The Estimation Of Competitive Balance In The Scottish Premier League," Scottish Journal of Political Economy, Scottish Economic Society, vol. 55(4), pages 488-508, September.
    24. David H. Autor, 2003. "Outsourcing at Will: The Contribution of Unjust Dismissal Doctrine to the Growth of Employment Outsourcing," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 21(1), pages 1-42, January.
    25. Yingying Dong, 2015. "Regression Discontinuity Applications with Rounding Errors in the Running Variable," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 30(3), pages 422-446, April.
    26. Stephen Morrow, 2006. "Scottish Football," Journal of Sports Economics, , vol. 7(1), pages 90-95, February.
    27. Farai Jena & Barry Reilly, 2016. "Testing the uncertainty outcome hypothesis using data from second tier soccer in Ireland," Applied Economics Letters, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 23(18), pages 1257-1260, December.
    28. John Goddard & Peter Sloane (ed.), 2014. "Handbook on the Economics of Professional Football," Books, Edward Elgar Publishing, number 14821.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Edinson Tolentino, 2022. "An evaluation of a mandatory profit-sharing reform in Peru, using quasi-experimental methods," Economia e Politica Industriale: Journal of Industrial and Business Economics, Springer;Associazione Amici di Economia e Politica Industriale, vol. 49(2), pages 313-334, June.
    2. Barry Reilly & Robert Witt, 2024. "The Effect of League Design on Club Revenues in the Scottish Premier League," Eastern Economic Journal, Palgrave Macmillan;Eastern Economic Association, vol. 50(1), pages 1-28, January.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Schreyer, Dominik & Schmidt, Sascha L. & Torgler, Benno, 2016. "Against all odds? Exploring the role of game outcome uncertainty in season ticket holders’ stadium attendance demand," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 56(C), pages 192-217.
    2. Raul Caruso & Francesco Addesa & Marco Di Domizio, 2019. "The Determinants of the TV Demand for Soccer: Empirical Evidence on Italian Serie A for the Period 2008-2015," Journal of Sports Economics, , vol. 20(1), pages 25-49, January.
    3. Pedro Garcia-del-Barrio & J. James Reade, 2022. "Does certainty on the winner diminish the interest in sport competitions? The case of formula one," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 63(2), pages 1059-1079, August.
    4. Dominik Schreyer & Sascha L. Schmidt & Benno Torgler, 2019. "Football Spectator No-Show Behavior," Journal of Sports Economics, , vol. 20(4), pages 580-602, May.
    5. Wladimir Andreff, 2009. "Équilibre compétitif et contrainte budgétaire dans une ligue de sport professionnel," Revue économique, Presses de Sciences-Po, vol. 60(3), pages 591-633.
    6. Dominik Schreyer & Benno Torgler, 2018. "On the Role of Race Outcome Uncertainty in the TV Demand for Formula 1 Grands Prix," Journal of Sports Economics, , vol. 19(2), pages 211-229, February.
    7. Barry Reilly & Robert Witt, 2024. "The Effect of League Design on Club Revenues in the Scottish Premier League," Eastern Economic Journal, Palgrave Macmillan;Eastern Economic Association, vol. 50(1), pages 1-28, January.
    8. Pedro Garcia-del-Barrio & J. James Reade, 2023. "The Impact of Uncertainty on Fan Interest Surrounding Multiple Outcomes in Open European Football Leagues," Economics Discussion Papers em-dp2023-02, Department of Economics, University of Reading.
    9. Patrick J. Ferguson & Karim R. Lakhani, 2023. "Consuming Contests: The Effect of Outcome Uncertainty on Spectator Attendance in the Australian Football League," The Economic Record, The Economic Society of Australia, vol. 99(326), pages 410-435, September.
    10. Dominik Schreyer & Sascha L. Schmidt & Benno Torgler, 2018. "Game Outcome Uncertainty in the English Premier League," Journal of Sports Economics, , vol. 19(5), pages 625-644, June.
    11. Adam C. Sales & Ben B. Hansen, 2020. "Limitless Regression Discontinuity," Journal of Educational and Behavioral Statistics, , vol. 45(2), pages 143-174, April.
    12. Dorian Owen, 2014. "Measurement of competitive balance and uncertainty of outcome," Chapters, in: John Goddard & Peter Sloane (ed.), Handbook on the Economics of Professional Football, chapter 3, pages 41-59, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    13. Schreyer & Torgler Benno & Schmidt Sascha L., 2018. "Game Outcome Uncertainty and Television Audience Demand: New Evidence from German Football," German Economic Review, De Gruyter, vol. 19(2), pages 140-161, May.
    14. Marco Di Domizio & Raul Caruso, 2015. "Hooliganism and Demand for Football in Italy: Attendance and Counterviolence Policy Evaluation," German Economic Review, Verein für Socialpolitik, vol. 16(2), pages 123-137, May.
    15. Vincent (Vincent Peter) Hogan & Patrick Massey, 2020. "Professional Rugby on the Celtic Fringe," Working Papers 202003, School of Economics, University College Dublin.
    16. Kelly Goossens, 2006. "Competitive balance in european football: comparison by adapting measures: national measure of seasonal imbalance and Top 3," Rivista di Diritto ed Economia dello Sport, Centro di diritto e business dello Sport, vol. 2(2), pages 77-122, Dicembre.
    17. Raphael Flepp & Pascal Flurin Meier, 2024. "Struck by Luck: Noisy Capability Cues and CEO Dismissal," Working Papers 389, University of Zurich, Department of Business Administration (IBW).
    18. Helmut Dietl & Egon Franck & Markus Lang & Alexander Rathke, 2010. "Organizational Differences between U.S. Major Leagues and European Leagues: Implications for Salary Caps," Working Papers 0035, University of Zurich, Center for Research in Sports Administration (CRSA).
    19. Selçuk Özaydın, 2018. "Modelling the European Football Demand for the 2014/2015 Season," Yildiz Social Science Review, Yildiz Technical University, vol. 4(1), pages 39-52.
    20. Dominik Schreyer & Sascha L. Schmidt & Benno Torgler, 2017. "Game Outcome Uncertainty and the Demand for International Football Games: Evidence From the German TV Market," Journal of Media Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 30(1), pages 31-45, January.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    spectator attendance Scottish Premiership RDD;

    JEL classification:

    • J1 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics

    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:sae:jospec:v:22:y:2021:i:5:p:514-545. 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.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with 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: SAGE Publications (email available below). General contact details of provider: .

    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.