Season ticket holder no-show behavior in the Czech Republic

Abstract

ABSTRACTRationale In professional sports, no-shows increasingly pose a significant challenge to the management. Even though previous research has already established that such spectator no-show behavior (NSB) is more widespread among season ticket holders (STHs), the related literature has produced conflicting findings on the antecedents of such potentially defective behavior, which requires additional analysis in alternative environments.Approach Accordingly, in this manuscript, we contribute to the slowly emerging literature explaining STH NSB by analyzing a previously unexplored football environment, i.e. the Czech Republic.Findings Interestingly, our findings suggest that most effects are likely robust across the different sporting environments and markets, despite a few noticeable differences.Practical implications While our results might inform more efficient STH recruitment (e.g. younger spectators, citizens of the town), they also underline that reducing no-show rates may be hard to obtain if seat supply exceeds demand.Research contribution Although future research on alternative sports and markets might be valuable, our results suggest that the marginal benefit of additional studies tends to decrease, perhaps naturally. In contrast, also reflecting on our apparent limitations, we believe that future research approaches might benefit tremendously from mixed methods approaches, ideally in cooperation with more than only one sporting association or club.KEYWORDS: Attendancedecision-makingdemandfootball/soccerno-showsseason ticketsspectator sportssubscription marketsstadiumsJEL CODES: D12L83R22Z20 AcknowledgmentsOur article is based on a chapter in the doctoral dissertation of the first author under the supervision of the third author. We want to thank the management of the Czech football club AC Sparta Praha for their tremendous support in conducting this research. Further, we gratefully acknowledge the excellent comments and suggestions from a reviewer, as well as the editorial board and the associate editor, all of which have helped us improve the manuscript’s quality.Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).Notes1 Although no-shows, i.e., “individuals who fail to show up for a scheduled appointment without prior notice” (Schreyer, Citation2021a, p. 331), have been previously explored in various industry contexts, including the education, hospitality, and transport industry, it is undoubtedly most pronounced in the health care industry. In this context, patients omit, on average, about every fourth appointment (c.f., Dantas et al., Citation2018). For an overview of the broader literature on no-show behavior, we refer to Amberger and Schreyer (Citation2022).2 Although we focus on European football – and reliable no-show data is relatively hard to obtain for sports economists and management researchers – Popp et al. (Citation2023) recently documented similarly significant no-show appearances in Major League Baseball, where 12,149 distributed tickets, about 3 in 10 distributed, remain unused.3 For a recent review of the still surprisingly sparse STH literature, we refer to McDonald et al. (Citation2023).4 While some authors have begun analyzing stadium attendances in relatively smaller European football markets such as Austria (Pawlowski & Nalbantis, Citation2015), Belarus (Reade et al., Citation2020), Ireland (e.g., Jena & Reilly, Citation2016), Netherlands (e.g., van Ours, Citation2021) or Norway (Ermakov & Krumer, Citation2022), recently, we are unaware of any research on the Czech First League/market. For sponsorship reasons, the league is also known as Fortuna Liga.5 For instance, as in ARF, football fans in these markets might purchase a season ticket to financially support their favorite football club rather than have guaranteed access to every home match.6 Although we only exploit data from 18 subsequent home matches from one club in this club’s domestic league, this approach is mainly in line with existing research (e.g., Karg et al., Citation2021b), primarily because such behavioral data on the individual level is usually hard to obtain.7 To increase the comparability with previous research (e.g., Schreyer et al., Citation2016), we excluded STHs below the age of seven. Further, we omitted attendance information generated from both UEFA Europa League qualifying and domestic cup competition matches, as previous research has typically centered on domestic competitions (e.g., Karg et al., Citation2021b).8 Interestingly, only about five percent of all STHs admissions were late, i.e., arriving past kick-off.9 As such, the NSR is roughly in line with that of Swiss FC Basel 1893 during the four years 2013–2016 (c.f., Schreyer & Torgler, Citation2021) but is significantly higher than, for instance, that of an unnamed German Bundesliga club in the season 2012–13 (c.f., Schreyer et al., Citation2016). According to Schreyer et al. (Citation2019), NSRs can, in fact, vary significantly between football clubs, that is, even between football clubs within the same league.10 As one reviewer has rightfully argued, the assumption here is that the individual unobserved heterogeneity is uncorrelated with the independent variables. To document that this holds in our empirical setting, we ran a Hausman-McFadden test, the results of which support the use of a RE model.11 For instance, this would be the case if, as one reviewer has suggested, so-called ultras were both reluctant to provide socio-demographic information and behaviorally highly loyal. Intriguingly, while we obviously cannot control for the level of team identification (e.g., Schreyer, Citation2019), which would be our preferred choice, we can proxy such hardcore support, to some degree, from accommodation information, which is available for every STH in our original data set. More specifically, in the season under investigation, the core support was located in only a few blocks (e.g., D45 – D48). Interestingly, and in support of the reviewer's excellent suggestion, we note that the relative share of those STHs located in the respective sections was significantly lower in the group offering complete information, even though the mean difference was only about 3 percent. Similarly, while we did not find significant group differences concerning the ticket price, we also note minor significant differences in the relative share of STHs located in the family section, the relative difference to the pitch, approximated by the row number, and also the time of purchase.12 As the otherwise rapidly expanding literature on stadium attendances has, so far, neglected the Czech football league entirely (cf., Schreyer & Ansari, Citation2022), in the appendix, we also provide some first evidence on determinants capturing product quality and the potential opportunity costs from admission on match day (cf.., Table A1 and A2). Although these results somewhat mirror previous findings, they should be taken with caution, primarily because, with only 18 matches, the sample is relatively small.13 Intriguingly, though, as Bergmann et al. (Citation2016) have shown, age could potentially proxy the level of team identification, which seems to be relatively high for both young and old fans, with a natural low at about the age of 40.14 Naturally, although we refer to stadium admission here, such support can be expressed in numerous ways, one of which is plain financial support (e.g., Karg et al., Citation2019).15 If this was, in fact, the case, which remains speculative, unfortunately, the NSRs documented here and in previous research (e.g., Schreyer, Citation2019) could be slightly overstated.16 In fact, as one can see from Table A2, there seems to exist an association between precipitation and NSB.17 Interestingly, two of these three clubs – Borussia Dortmund (implicitly) and FC Barcelona (explicitly) – have recently admitted significant numbers of STH no-show appearances (c.f., Schreyer, Citation2019).18 Put differently, during the season 2017-18, ACSP's staff did not check the IDs or passports of (season) ticket holders entering the stadium through the turnstiles, which effectively means that we cannot prove that the respective individual in the stand was, in fact, the (season) ticket owner. Obviously, while, perhaps, only a minor problem, such behavior would ultimately lead to somewhat biased estimates, specifically regarding socio-demographic explanatories. Intriguingly, as one reviewer has sketched, in such cases where sharing season tickets is permitted by the club or relatively convenient (e.g., through an official secondary ticket market platform), there might exist alternative explanations for high NSRs, perhaps even indicating the STH's lacking social ties. While intuitive, perhaps, we believe that such a judgment would only be valid if stadium attendance demand would regularly, or better always, surpass seat supply, which is not the case in Prague.