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Live football and tourism expenditure: match attendance effects in the UK
Sharma, Abhijit Rudkin, Simon
Sharma, Abhijit
Rudkin, Simon
Publication Date
2020
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© 2020 Taylor & Francis. The Version of Record of this manuscript has been published and is available in European Sport Management Quarterly at https://doi.org/10.1080/16184742.2019.1604783.
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openAccess
Accepted for publication
03/04/2019
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Abstract
The inbound tourist expenditure generating role of football (soccer), particularly the English Premier League 15 (EPL) is evaluated. An enhanced economic and management understanding of the role of regular sporting fixtures emerges, as well as quantification of their impact. Expenditure on football tickets is isolated to identify local economic spillovers outside the stadium walls.
Using the UK International Passenger Survey, unconditional quantile regressions (UQR) is used to evaluate the distributional impact of football attendance on tourist expenditures. Both total expenditure and a new measure which adjusts expenditures for football ticket prices are considered. UQR is a novel technique which is as yet underexploited within sport economics and confers important methodological advantages over both OLS and quantile regressions.
Significant cross quantile variation is found. High spending football fans spend more, even after ticket prices are excluded. Surprisingly, spending effects owing to attendance are strongest for those who overall spend the least, confirming the role of sport as a generator of tourist expenditure unlike most others. Though the attendance effect is smaller for higher aggregate spenders, there is nevertheless a significant impact across the distribution.
Distributional expenditure impacts highlight clear differentials between attendance by high and low spenders. Similar analysis is applicable to other global brands such as the National Football League (NFL) in the United States (American football) and the Indian Premier (cricket) League. The EPL’s global popularity can be leveraged for achieving enhanced tourist expenditure.
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Accepted manuscript
Citation
Sharma A and Rudkin S (2020) Live football and tourism expenditure: match attendance effects in the UK. European Sport Management Quarterly. 20(3): 276-299.
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Article