78 – For the Love of the Game: Applications of Statistics in Sports
Collegiate Football Attendance in El Paso
Thomas M. Fullerton Jr.
The University of Texas at El Paso
Wesley A. Miller
The University of Texas at El Paso
This study examines determinants of ticket sales at the University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP) Miners football games from 1967 to 2014. To date, relatively few time series data samples for athletic event ticket sales have been employed for periods covering 10 years or more. Most prior research has been performed using panel data for entire leagues or conferences with time periods that range between one and five years. The data for this study cover 48 consecutive collegiate football seasons. The sample period thus includes a rich set of information covering a wide range of team performances, ticket prices, television coverage, and stadium seating capacity. Importantly, the sample also includes complete information for multiple business cycles (expansions, recessions, and recoveries) and measurement of key economic variables such as real per capita income and the local unemployment rate. Parameter estimates indicate that the demand curve for NCAA football in El Paso is upward sloping and that television coverage does not reduce local ticket sales. Ticket sales are inversely correlated with the local unemployment rate and positively correlated with income. Out-of-sample simulations for games played during 2015 indicate that model forecasting performance is reliable.