Competitive Intensity, Fans’ Expectations, and Match-Day Tickets Sold in the Italian Football Serie A, 2012-2015

Abstract

This article investigates the impact of the competitive intensity (CI) on the stadium attendance for Italian soccer in three Serie A seasons (2012-13 to 2014-15). The central element of novelty concerning the existing literature is that fans expectations are also included among the explanatory variables of the Tobit model. Our results show that CI has a significant impact on match-day attendance in relation to all the sporting prizes but Europa League qualification. Moreover, we find evidence supporting the existence of reference-dependent preferences, where the attendance increases when the home team rank is higher than the preseason expectations.