Essay 1: Consumption of Motion Picture Art - Critics´ reviews and ticket price in explaining movie admissions

1.2Essay 2: Demand for ice hockey, the factors explaining attendance of ice hockey games in Finland

The second essay studies the ice hockey match attendance during the regular season 2007 – 2008 in Finland. The ice hockey league, ‘SM-liiga’ is the most important live cultural event or series of cultural events in terms of attendance per event. Yearly movies attendance is three times bigger compared with the ice hockey matches but ice hockey is by far the most popular live event. The total attendance was 1,964,626 i.e. 5,012 per match excluding play-off matches in March and April as done in this research. Ice hockey match has big uncertain component also compared with the opera and theatre where there is a manuscript to follow. The home team might win or lose the match depending on the quality of the team and the visitor. Potentially the attendence to ice hockey game could be sensitive to the ticket prices and to the seasonal variation and team performance. The Finnish data on the recent International Social Survey Programme (ISSP 2007) reveals that almost 40 % of the population never goes to see a sports activity (ice hockey, football, athletics, motor racing etc.), less than 8 % attends several times a month and the rest (i.e. more than 50 %) occasionally. The same survey also shows that physical exercise (active sport consumption) is more common than passive sport consumption (table 1: Sports consumption in Finland 2007).

Active and passive (attendance) sports consumption are slightly positively correlated (Kendall’s τ = 0,054, n = 1314, sig. = 0,028). There is also a negative relationship between age and passive sports consumption (Spearman’s ρ = -0,182, n = 1265, sig. = 0,000). For female the negative relationship is somewhat stronger (Spearman’s ρ = -0,193, n = 724, sig. = 0,000) than for male (Spearman’s ρ = -0,179, n = 540, sig. = 0,000)⁴.

The second essay (”Demand for ice hockey, the factors explaining the attendance of ice hockey games in Finland”) has particularly focus on the effects of public information on the ice hockey attendance. Since men typically read the sport pages of newspapers, the home team’s performance is well known. The performance is operationalized as the points per game measure (success). The role of distance between the home and visitor teams is also studied? We assume that the geographical distance between the home town and the visitor’s tome is a part of admittance cost. If the distance measure is ignored the price variable is incorrect.

The results indicate that both the size of the population in the town of the home team and in the town of the visitor have a statistically significant effect on attendance. The distance between home team’s town and visiting team’s town is also significant, i.e. local games have a bigger attendance than other games. Public information is also important because the demand is not elastic with respect to the ticket price. The price variable is not the actual average price since this data was not available. The price variable used in the estimations is the ticket price to the best seats, where we expect real variation the number of available seats. As the season goes on and more games have been played, attendance seems to diminish but the estimated coefficient is low even though significant. Team’s success seems to attract a bigger attendance, while visitor’s success has the opposite effect. Spectators are willing to see live game in the stadium if they expect that home team will win the game. Our results show that team could optimize their revenues by setting higher ticket prices on matches where local teams play and also when the likelihood of winning the game increase. This is further supported by the fact that loyal supporters have a season ticket, but the share of season ticket holders in the audience is not known. Success of both the home team and the visitor has an effect: home team’s success with a positive and visitor’s with a negative coefficient. The number of plays already played has a negative effect. Weekday effect is important: the attendance is bigger during Saturdays. Also the day temperature has an effect: the colder, the bigger attendance. That effect is small but still statistically significant. The local unemployment rate has no effect. In the interpretation of ice hockey as consumption good it is also important to find that the success factor of the last three games (the form guide) does not seem to explain the attendance as well as the success factor of all games played. Ice hockey attendance has a negative income elasticity. The third essay shows that a typical sport spectator is a young man with rather low educational level. Older consumers who have a higher education typically choose performing arts, like going to theatre or opera. Therefore the income elasticity of sport events is negative.