Attendance in the Canadian Hockey League: The Impact of Winning, Fighting, Uncertainty of Outcome, and Weather on Junior Hockey Attendance

Abstract

An attendance model is specified for the Canadian Hockey League (CHL), the top level of junior hockey in Canada with some teams located in the United States. The natural log of attendance is used as the dependent variable, with explanatory variables consisting of the timing of the game, team performance characteristics, uncertainty of outcome measures, and weather-related variables. Weekends and Mondays were the most popular days for games. Winning and fighting were shown to be popular team characteristics that drive attendance. Uncertainty of outcome plays little role, if any, in fan interest at this level, while precipitation significantly reduces attendance.

Stadium Attendance Demand Research: A Scoping Review

“…Somewhat similarly, we observe a continuous interest in the potential role of stars, including, for example, local heroes (Yamamura, 2011), marquee players (Jewell, 2017), star pitchers (Ormiston, 2014), and top-drafted rookies (Kelley, 2020), in modeling stadium attendance demand. In contrast, we only count a few studies that concentrate on team success (e.g., Paul et al, 2019; Pinnuck & Potter, 2006; Watanabe & Soebbing, 2017) and contest significance.…”

“…Despite the early criticism from Forrest et al (2005), only a few authors have explored disaggregated attendance information. In fact, somewhat surprisingly, the authors of only about 30 manuscripts discussed, often briefly, the potential limitations that may arise from the use of such data generated across both matchday ticket holders and season ticket holders (e.g., Barajas et al, 2019; Buraimo et al, 2018; Paul et al, 2019). As such, it is perhaps not surprising that the authors of only about a handful of manuscripts explicitly explored the behavioral intentions of matchday ticket holders (e.g., Allan & Roy, 2008; Benz et al, 2009; Bond & Addesa, 2020), that is, by analyzing attendance data after having subtracted season ticket holder data, or added such season ticket holder data as an explanatory variable (e.g., Chmait et al, 2020).…”

Tooth for a tooth: Does fighting serve as a deterrent to greater violence in the modern NHL

“…The NHL and other North American revenue-producing leagues, such as the American Hockey League, East Coast Hockey League, Ontario Hockey League, Western Hockey League, Quebec Major Junior Hockey League, and United States Hockey League, have other incentives to continue to support fighting in hockey. Previous work has shown that fights may increase fan attendance [ 17 , 18 ], which drive revenues in many of these leagues. This creates a conflict of interest for league executives that may place revenue growth above player health and safety.…”

The impact of environmental barriers on attendance of outdoor and indoor professional sports: the case of the South Korean soccer, baseball and basketball leagues

“…Previous studies have provided empirical evidence that precipitation is a significant factor in reducing attendance at sporting events (e.g. Butler, 2002; Paul et al , 2019). Similarly, in our study, we concluded that precipitation that occurred during the match, as well as 3 hours before and after the match, had a negative effect on K-league attendance.…”