Factors Influencing Spectators’ Attendance of Malaysian Super League Using Bootstrap Linear Model

Abstract

Football is the world's most popular sports. One of the indicators that show the football popularity is the large number of stadium spectators. It is crucial for the event management to determine the factors that significantly affect the stadium attendance as this will help them in scheduling the football match locations. This study aims to determine the factors that might influence the attendance of spectators to the Malaysian Super League (MSL) matches. Spectators' attendance for 2008/ 2009 seasons were used in the analysis and bootstrap linear model was preferred to ordinary linear model to model the spectators' attendance as it can improve the model efficiency for MSL data with outlier problem. Results of the analysis show that bootstrap linear model produces the most reliable result with a model producing higher adjusted R-Square value. From the selected model, it can be concluded that performance and percentage of matches won by the home team are the significant factors which can influence the attendance of spectators to the matches.