The paper analyses the impact of the relatively belated move to professionalism in Rugby Union. We use data on match attendance for 3,667 fixtures in European club Rugby over 15 seasons to estimate the effect of competitive balance on attendance. We find that (short- and medium-term) competitive...

In 1983 England's fifth-tier football competition introduced a two-points-for-ahome-win and three-points-for-an-away-win reward system. This system was abolished after three seasons. The anomalous point system may have been introduced to reduce home advantage but the reasons are not fully clear...

Asian organic foods consumers’ behaviour is worth investigating to sustain the continuous growth of organic foods consumption. Hence, Fiona has the ambition to employ the innovation diffusion theory to profile and understand organic foods consumers in Hong Kong in her research proposal. The...

In this study we analyze perception of authenticity by visitors of South Tyrol’s museum of archeology, best known as Ötzi museum, in the Autonomous Province of Bolzano (Italy). With the help of factor analysis we individuate two factors related to authenticity and study the determinants of...

The purpose of the paper is to suggest a new perspective on the social role in the community for Italian professional soccer clubs. Our findings loosen the knot between hooligans and clubs and could have important consequences on the club’s corporate social responsibility and marketing...

This paper develops a model of attendance for provincial rugby in New Zealand by considering representative games played in Wanganui from 1972-1994. The model is comparable with similar studies in that it encompasses economic and sport-specific dimensions of game attendance. The price elasticity...

This paper presents estimation results on the size and loyalty of sport teams’ supporter groups in professional German football. Based on a novel two-stage estimation procedure, we find clear evidence for heterogeneity across teams. In a first stage, a random utility model for a representative...

This paper tests the hypothesis that a nation’s hosting of a mega-sporting event is an experience good for its residents. Applying data from an ex-ante and ex-post query based on contingent valuation methods, we use the Soccer World Cup 2006 as a natural experiment. The significant ex-post...

Large sports stadia construction follows two different general concepts: (1) Mono-functional arenas which are specially suited for one sport exclusively and which are characterised by the absence of an athletic track. (2) Multifunctional sports stadia which can be used for different sporting or...

We examine the role of attendance in home-field advantage for Major League Baseball, using a dataset of all MLB games played from 1996 to 2005. Using two-stage least squares, we find that attendance has a significant effect on the home-field advantage. Our results indicate that a one standard...