They are not all the same: Determinants of attendance across different sectors in a stadium

Abstract

Previous research inspecting the demand for tickets for professional sports has mostly used aggregate data in their estimations. In a nutshell, it implies that all fans would be driven by the same determinants. In this research, we test whether this hypothesis holds. We analyse all first-tier Brazilian League home matches of both Flamengo and Fluminense at the iconic stadium Maracanã (Brazil) from 2014 to 2019. Ordinary Least Square regressions model individual equations for each sector for comparing their determinants. Our empirical results offer evidence that ticket price and Uncertainty of Outcome have different impact on demand for tickets according to the sector. Further research is encouraged to inspect whether similar behavior is detected in other settings.