Advanced Search
MyIDEAS: Login

Game Attendance and Competitive Balance in the National Hockey League

Contents:

Author Info

  • Coates, Dennis

    () (UMBC, Department of Economics)

  • Humphreys, Brad

    () (University of Alberta, Department of Economics)

Abstract

We examine the relationship between attendance, uncertainty of outcome, and team quality in the National Hockey League. Based on results from a reduced form model of attendance at 6054 regular season NHL games from 2005/06 to 2009/10, we find evidence that attendance increases when fans expect the home team to win by a large margin. Attendance increases for home team underdogs, but the extent of that boost declines as the underdog status worsens. An asymmetric relationship exists between expected game outcomes and attendance, suggesting the need for an expanded definition of the Uncertainty of Outcome Hypothesis.

Download Info

If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the proper application to view it first. 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.
File URL: http://www.uofaweb.ualberta.ca/economics2/pdfs/WP2011-08-Humphreys.pdf
File Function: Full text
Download Restriction: no

Bibliographic Info

Paper provided by University of Alberta, Department of Economics in its series Working Papers with number 2011-8.

as in new window
Length: 23 pages
Date of creation: 01 Jun 2011
Date of revision:
Handle: RePEc:ris:albaec:2011_008

Contact details of provider:
Postal: 8-14 HM Tory, Edmonton, Alberta, T6G 2H4
Phone: (780) 492-3406
Fax: (780) 492-3300
Web page: http://www.uofaweb.ualberta.ca/economics/
More information through EDIRC

Related research

Keywords: uncertainty of outcome hypothesis; attendance demand; National Hockey League;

Other versions of this item:

Find related papers by JEL classification:

This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

References

References listed on IDEAS
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.:
as in new window
  1. Jeffery Borland, 2003. "Demand for Sport," Oxford Review of Economic Policy, Oxford University Press, vol. 19(4), pages 478-502, Winter.
  2. Paul, Rodney J. & Weinbach, Andrew P., 2007. "The uncertainty of outcome and scoring effects on Nielsen ratings for Monday Night Football," Journal of Economics and Business, Elsevier, vol. 59(3), pages 199-211.
  3. David Forrest & Robert Simmons & Babatunde Buraimo, 2005. "Outcome Uncertainty And The Couch Potato Audience," Scottish Journal of Political Economy, Scottish Economic Society, vol. 52(4), pages 641-661, 09.
  4. Brad R. Humphreys & Yang Seung Lee, 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 280-295, November.
  5. Peel, David A & Thomas, Dennis A, 1992. "The Demand for Football: Some Evidence on Outcome Uncertainty," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 17(2), pages 323-31.
  6. repec:sae:jospec:v:11:y:2010:i:3:p:316-348 is not listed on IDEAS
  7. Amemiya, Takeshi, 1984. "Tobit models: A survey," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 24(1-2), pages 3-61.
  8. repec:sae:jospec:v:3:y:2002:i:2:p:133-148 is not listed on IDEAS
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 in new window

Cited by:
  1. Coates, Dennis & Humphreys, Brad & Zhou, Li, 2012. "Outcome Uncertainty, Reference-Dependent Preferences and Live Game Attendance," Working Papers 2012-7, University of Alberta, Department of Economics.

Lists

This item is not listed on Wikipedia, on a reading list or among the top items on IDEAS.

Statistics

Access and download statistics

Corrections

When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ris:albaec:2011_008

For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: (Brenda Carrier).

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 references are entirely missing, you can add them using this form.

If the full references list an item that is present in RePEc, but the system did not link 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 profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

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