The Demand for Football in Switzerland: An Empirical Estimation

Abstract

This paper identifies the factors determining the attendance at football games in Switzerland. Our data covers three seasons of the top division of the Swiss football league, between 2001 and 2004, which includes a major revision of the championship rules in 2003-2004. We were able to gather a high amount of information, allowing us to take into consideration several factors not always accounted for simultaneously in the literature, such as ticket price, capacity constraint, TV coverage, as well as more traditional factors like uncertainty. In order to cope with problems imposed by capacity constraints as well as the panel dimension of the data, we make use of a random effects Tobit model. Among others, our results show that TV coverage does not have a significant impact on the number of spectators, and, except for FC Basel, the price-elasticity is relatively low, which indicates that football clubs could raise their gate revenues by increasing ticket prices. Furthermore, the new championship formula did clearly raise attendances.

Keywords: Demand for sport, attendance, football, censoring, Tobit estimation

JEL Classification: L83, C24