Modelling Attendance at Spanish Professional Football League Articles uri icon

authors

  • VILLA VALDES, GUILLERMO
  • MOLINA PERALTA, ISABEL
  • FRIED, ROLAND HERMANN

publication date

  • March 2011

start page

  • 1189

end page

  • 1206

issue

  • 6

volume

  • 38

International Standard Serial Number (ISSN)

  • 0266-4763

Electronic International Standard Serial Number (EISSN)

  • 1360-0532

abstract

  • Prediction of demand for professional sports is increasingly drawing the attention of economists. We apply linear mixed models for modeling attendance figures at Spanish professional football. We investigate
    economic variables, such as the price of the tickets or the size of the
    market, and sporting variables, such as the quality of a team or the
    level of competition within the league, as potential predictors of
    attendance. It turns out that a model with temporally correlated random
    team effects provides good forecasts of attendance at a time horizon of
    two seasons. Results from this model agree with economic theory.