A game of two halves: Determinants of attendance in the FA WSL and male team spillover effects

Research question: This paper studies the determinants of stadium attendance at matches in the highest tier of English women’s football, the Women’s Super League (WSL). The interest of such analysis is twofold. First, it represents an illustrative example to study the impact of brand expansions on consumers’ interest since many women’s football teams are multiproduct extensions of existing men’s teams. Our second contribution is to study the specific drivers of consumer interest in the WSL. Research methods: This paper models attendance demand for the WSL from the 2011 to the 2022/23 season, using a sample of 777 observations. The specification includes a rich set of controls capturing team and match characteristics as well as performance and economic indicators. We also control for home and away team fixed effects and employ year and seasonal dummies. Using such a framework, we assess the spillover effects of the men’s team performance on its women’s counterpart. Results and Findings: It is found that three groups of factors predict WSL consumers’ interest: (1) team and game characteristics such as, team performance, weather indicators and team rivalry, (2) success of the national team, and (3) performance and characteristics of the men’s team. Our results stand up to several robustness tests, such as controlling for previous attendance, match significance or fixture-specific dummy variables. 3 Implications: The analysis indicates a spillover effect from the performance of the men’s team on attendance at the women’s team’s matches. It has clear implications for the club’s stakeholders, as investment returns may differ if the spillover effects are considered. Our results also highlight the importance of the performance of the women’s national team in boosting WSL attendance.