Air ball! Team performance unable to predict spectator attendance in Romanian basketball

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to investigate how sports team performance influences attendance numbers. Knowing this can be important for sports managers in planning their club marketing strategies. The research observes attendance figures and team performance data from the Romanian Men’s Basketball League (LNBM) over five years (2012-2017). The results of the bivariate regression analysis indicate that although the Null Hypothesis can be invalidated and a certain connection between the variables can be accepted, the relationship is only weak and of low significance (R=0.45; R2=0.20). Attendance numbers cannot be predicted based on team performance, mainly because performance can variate strongly over longer periods of time, or even from one game to another. Instead, the study suggests that sports managers should (also) look at other market variables (ticket prices, scheduleing, transportation and opportunity costs, advertising campaigns etc.) in their attempt to create strategies able to bring more fans to the arena.