The Impact of Star Power and Team Quality on NBA Attendance
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Date
2018-05
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The Ohio State University
Abstract
As data analytics has improved rapidly in the past decade, sports analytics is playing a more crucial role in the sports industry. Professional sports leagues like the NBA and MLB have utilized on-field analytics to improve the performance of teams and players. At the same time, team managers use off-field analytics to gain insights on the business side. As a direct indicator of ticket sales, attendance is an important area to study. Many factors affect attendance, but the influence brought by each factor is different. The purpose of this research is to show the impact of star power and team quality on NBA attendance, as well as to determine whether superstar presence or a championship caliber team (or both) drives NBA attendance. The dataset includes attendance data of all NBA teams in the past two seasons (2015-2016 and 2016-2017 seasons). NBA teams are separated into four groups for this research: the high-level team (playoff team) with at least one superstar, the high-level team with no superstars, the low-level team (non-playoff team) with at least one superstar, and the low-level team with no superstars. Each group is tested separately in order to find any differences in attendance. Descriptive analysis results suggest that even a single visiting superstar will increase attendance, and this effect is larger for low-level teams. Moreover, when a team has high attendance variability, the effect of one or more visiting superstars is even larger. Regression models are utilized to find the correlation between star power, team quality, and attendance. Two separate regression models of star power and team quality are tested first in this research, and the results show that both star power and team quality have a significant impact on NBA attendance. However, when the superstar and high-level team are combined together, the high-level team with at least one superstar drives attendance, and the high-level team without superstars doesn't attract more audience. After analyzing the impact of star power and team quality on NBA attendance, NBA team managers can make specific and targeted marketing strategies to increase ticket sales.
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Keywords
Sports Analytics, Sports Economics, NBA Attendance