The Influence of Winning on Mid-Major College Football Attendance
Tim Padgett
Arkansas State University
C. Shane Hunt
Arkansas State University
A strong positive correlation exists between winning percentage and attendance within a given season.
Understanding this correlation is important to sports marketers and sports business managers.
Considering that marketers have no impact on win-loss record, this impact can be extracted before
evaluating an organization’s marketing performance. Sports business managers have to consider the
uncertainty of a team’s performance during an upcoming season when they attempt to accurately project
revenues.
BACKGROUND
The relationship between higher winning percentages and higher attendance in sports has long been a
given. The naked eye can clearly see that the New York Yankees draw more than the Pittsburgh Pirates,
the Los Angeles Lakers draw more than the Los Angeles Clippers, and the University of Alabama
football program draws more than the University of Alabama at Birmingham football program. A
complex analysis is not necessary to realize that this higher attendance is due in large part to the winning
tradition of the teams with the greater attendance.
What is not as clear is the specific impact that higher winning percentages have on attendance. If we
are able to quantify this impact then we would be able to extract this impact on the front end of marketing
evaluations and have a much clearer picture of the effectiveness of an organization’s marketing efforts.
For example, an increase in attendance may be easily attributed to a jump in a team’s winning
percentage. In reality the increased winning percentage may be a big part of that increase, but another
important part may have been the hard work of an organization’s marketing department. Without being
able to accurately extract the impact of the increased winning percentage, the hard work of the marketing
department would be unrecognized and unrewarded. On the other hand, attributing a drop in attendance
entirely to a drop in winning percentage may be overlooking an ineffective marketing department.
PURPOSE
In this paper we will examine the impact that winning percentage has on college football at the mid-
major level. The mid-major level is chosen because most of these programs rarely play before capacity
crowds. The table below shows the average attendance by conference between 2005 and 2009 and how
that attendance compares to the average capacity of the conference’s stadiums.
Journal of Applied Business and Economics vol. 13(2) 2012 129
TABLE 1
Conference 2009 2008 2007 2006 2005 Average Avg Cap. %Capacity
SEC 76,288 76,844 75,139 75,706 74,579 75,711 77,401 97.82%
Big Ten 71,769 70,125 71,158 69,643 72,566 71,052 74,560 95.30%
Big 12 62,875 62,956 60,941 59,968 58,397 61,027 66,374 91.94%
ACC 51,249 52,737 53,787 52,936 52,242 52,590 58,690 89.61%
Pac 10 54,186 57,350 57,956 56,314 57,479 56,657 64,547 87.78%
Big East 44,804 43,145 41,456 39,043 39,400 41,570 48,984 84.86%
Moutain West 33,202 32,021 33,937 32,766 35,275 33,440 46,905 71.29%
WAC 22,749 24,475 23,014 17,696 21,595 21,906 31,675 69.16%
Sun Belt 16,463 18,584 16,374 17,097 16,881 17,080 28,093 60.80%
C-USA 26,600 27,118 27,666 26,645 25,543 26,714 46,252 57.76%
MAC 15,317 16,727 17,334 17,696 14,489 16,313 31,452 51.86%
Sources: NCAA.org, collegegridirons.com
Table 1
It is most probably no coincidence that those schools in the bottom conferences of the above chart are
also those with the most limited resources (Eichelberger, 2009). Therefore it is even more crucial to
programs at this level to understand what drives their attendance. A better understanding of what drives
their attendance means a better understanding of what drives their revenue, which is crucial to any
business but especially to those experiencing economic hardship.
By focusing on the mid-major level we are able to see large fluctuations in attendance that allows us
to more accurately examine the impact of winning percentage. Examining a 5% increase in attendance of
a Conference USA team will tell us more than a 0.2% increase in a SEC school’s attendance. Such an
increase would also mean significantly more to the bottom line of the Conference USA team’s budget
than the SEC team’s budget. Even a 5% fluctuation in attendance at the SEC level would mean little to a
SEC team’s bottom line given that revenues at these schools are also driven significantly by television
contracts and bowl payouts.
LITERATURE REVIEW
A study done by David C. Funk, Kevin Filo, Anthony A. Beaton, and Mark Pritchard focused on
several factors that motivate fans to attend sport events (Funk, Filo, Beaton, & Pritchard, 2009). Among
these factors was “esteem,” which was measured by whether or not fans feel as though they win when
their team wins and whether fans get a sense of accomplishment when the team wins. While this factor is
very closely related to the win/loss factor we are examining, it is probable that there are still fans out there
that choose to attend or not to attend games based on the quality of the team, even if the result does not
have a significant impact on how they feel about themselves.
Emotional attachment has been found to be a factor that fans consider when attending games (Koo &
Hardin, 2008). This emotional attachment is built over several years and often includes going to games as
a young child. This emotional attachment is often even stronger when the team represents the spectator’s
alma-mater. Memories of one’s college years and reunion with old college friends are likely to keep a
significant number of people coming to games even when the team’s performance may be subpar.
Several findings in Michael Davis’ research on the correlation between winning and attendance in
Major League Baseball will be applicable to our study as well. Davis first solved the “Chicken or the Egg
Conundrum” of whether winning leads to increased attendance or increased attendance leads to winning.
130 Journal of Applied Business and Economics vol. 13(2) 2012
A (positive) correlation was only found with the former. Davis also found that a successful season will
lead to increased attendance during the following years as momentum of the previous success draws in
more through a bandwagon effect (Davis, 2008 ).
Research done by Glen Knowles, Keith Sherony, and Mike Haupert focused upon how the
uncertainty of the outcome impacted attendance in Major League Baseball. They found that attendance
was maximized when the home team had a 60% chance of winning. This supports the hypothesis that
sports fans want to see a winning a product (Knowles, Sherony, & Haupert, 1992).
One leading article on college football attendance factors was done by Donald Price and Kabir Sen.
This article is extremely helpful in examining the many underlying factors that affect college football
attendance (Price & Sen, 2003). However, most of these factors are factors that administrators have little
to no control over. Our piece will hopefully prove a strong compliment to Price and Sen in future works
that examine factors affecting college football attendance.
Those who know the most about college football, the coaches themselves, also agree that winning
games are important for attendance. In fact, when asked to rate factors affecting attendance on a 1-7 scale,
winning was found to be the most important with a 6.68 rating (Hay & Rao, 1984).
METHODS AND HYPOTHESIS
We have already established that we will focus on mid-major schools who often struggle filling their
stadiums. Furthermore, since inclement weather in the late fall plays a huge role in determining
attendance at cold weather schools, we will focus strictly on Conference USA and the Sun-Belt
Conference. As seen in Table 1, these conferences on average only had 57.76% (CUSA) and 60.80%
(SBC) capacity over the last five years.
Our first study (appendix 1) will look at how a team’s performance during a season (measured by
increase or decrease in winning percentage from the previous season) impacts attendance during the next
season. It would be a reasonable assumption for a team to believe that an increase in winning percentage
should lead to an increase in season ticket sales the next season. By the same logic, a drop-off in winning
percentage should lead to a drop-off in season ticket sales.
While season ticket sales are affected by the previous season, tickets bought on a game-by-game basis
should be affected minimally by the previous season. While consumers may decide to purchase tickets to
the first game or two based upon the previous season, eventually the current season will become the
driving factor in determining whether or not they attend the game.
The second study (appendix 2) examines the impact winning percentage has on the current season’s
attendance. We expect a strong correlation between these two factors. A team that is winning more than
the previous year should expect to see higher attendance accordingly. More importantly, this analysis will
lead us one step closer to being able to quantify the impact.
RESULTS AND ANALYSIS
The first study showed a weak correlation between improvement or decline in winning percentage
and attendance the following season. This is probably due to only a small fraction of ticket sales at this
level being season tickets. The bigger conferences that have a much larger season ticket as part of overall
tickets sold percentage would probably show a much greater correlation in this study.
The second study that examined the effect of winning percentage on attendance during the same
season showed a much stronger correlation (R Square of .189). This strongly indicates that a significant
percentage of the fan base of CUSA and SBC teams decide to attend games on a game by game basis
based upon how the team is performing during that season.
Journal of Applied Business and Economics vol. 13(2) 2012 131
MANAGERIAL IMPLICATIONS
From a marketing perspective, we now have a better understanding of the impact winning percentage
fluctuation has on season attendance. With this knowledge, marketing evaluators are able to extract the
significant portion of the fluctuation of attendance attributed to on-field performance, which is out of the
control of marketing managers.
Since attendance is directly related to revenue, it also illustrates the difficulty in accurately projecting
revenue in budget forecasts. Considering that accurately projecting win-loss records is an art-form that
nobody has shown any evidence of mastering, these programs are going into each fiscal year with a
tremendous amount of revenue uncertainty.
This evidence also strongly indicates that discretionary resources should be invested in strengthening
the on-field product given the impact illustrated in this study on attendance. This can be done by
increasing recruiting budgets, allocating more resources towards attracting top-tier coaching talent, or
investing in new weight room equipment.
LIMITATIONS AND FUTURE RESEARCH
This study would benefit from specific information from schools that separates season ticket sales and
walk-up ticket sales. This would allow a better understanding of the effect previous success or failure has
on season ticket sales, most of which are bought prior to the next season. If the success or failure of the
previous season is shown to have a significant impact on season ticket sales than the increase of season
ticket sales would be one avenue towards achieving more revenue certainty.
REFERENCES
Davis, M. C. (2008 ). The Interaction Between Baseball Attendance and Winning Percentage.
International Journal of Sport Finance , 58-73.
Eichelberger, C. (2009, January 6). Bloomberg. Retrieved May 15, 2010, from
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Funk, D. C., Filo, K., Beaton, A. A., & Pritchard, M. (2009). Measuring the Motives of Sport Event
Attendance: Bridging the Academic-Practitioner Divide to Understanding Behavior. Sport Marketing
Quarterly , 126-138.
Hay, R., & Rao, C. (1984). Football Coaches Rank Factors Impacting Attendance at Games. Marketing
News , 5.
Knowles, G., Sherony, K., & Haupert, M. (1992). The Demand for Major League Baseball: A Test of the
Uncertainty of Outcome Hypothesis. American Economist , 72-81.
Koo, G.-Y., & Hardin, R. (2008). Difference In Interrelationship Between Spectator Motives and
Behavioral Intentions Based On Emotional Attachment. Sport Marketing Quarterly , 30-43.
Price, D., & Sen, K. (2003). The Demand for Game Day Attendance in College Football: An analysis of
the 1997 Division 1-A Season. Managerial and Decision Economics , 35-46.
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