Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-g7gxr Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-10-30T11:39:49.315Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Comparing Attendances and Memberships in the Australian Football League: The Case of Hawthorn

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2023

Liam J. A. Lenten*
Affiliation:
La Trobe University, Melbourne, Australia
Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Core share and HTML view are not available for this content. However, as you have access to this content, a full PDF is available via the ‘Save PDF’ action button.

While the linkage between team performance and attendances is well established, there has been negligible previous research using club memberships as an alternative indicator of demand for sport. Little attention has been paid to how the number of memberships is affected by common measures of team performance, such as the team’s win-ratio. This study utilises a previously unavailable long range time-series data set of annual memberships for an Australian Football League (AFL) club, Hawthorn FC. A succession of basic correlation analyses demonstrates that, while the relation between club membership numbers and win-ratios is strongly positive as it is for attendances (for most of the sample), some of the finer properties are substantially different. It is suggested that much of the reason for this lies in differences between the segmented nature of these markets for attendances and memberships.

Type
Symposium
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s) 2012

Footnotes

1.

Earlier versions of this article were presented in seminars at: (i) Örebro University, Department of Business, Economics, Statistics and Informatics; (ii) University of Aarhus, Department of Economics; and (iii) RMIT University, School of Economics, Finance and Marketing. The author would like to thank the various participants of these seminars for their comments and suggestions. The author would also like to thank Peter Haby for his efforts in obtaining the earlier part of the sample, as well as his general knowledge and assistance; and finally both Wayne Geerling and Shaun Lenten; as well asTanya Tran, who noticed some errors on an earlier draft.

References

Booth, D. R. (2004) ‘The economics of achieving competitive balance in the Australian Football League, 1897–2004’, Economic Papers, 23(4), pp. 325344.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Borland, J., Lye, J. N. (1992) ‘Attendance at Australian Rules football: A panel study’, Applied Economics, 24(9), pp. 10531058.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Borland, J., Macdonald, R. (2003) ‘Demand for sport’, Oxford Review of Economic Policy, 19(4), pp. 478502.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Butler, M. R. (2002) ‘Interleague play and baseball attendance’, Journal of Sports Economics, 3(4), pp. 320334.Google Scholar
DellaVigna, S., Malmendier, U. M. (2006) ‘Paying not to go to the gym’, American Economic Review, 96(3), pp. 694719.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fuller, P., Stewart, M. (1996) ‘Attendance patterns at Victorian and South Australian football games’, Economic Papers, 15(1), pp. 8393.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Funk, D. C., James, J. (2001) ‘A psychological continuum model: A conceptual framework for understanding an individual’s connection to sport’, Sport Management Review, 4(2), pp. 119150.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gleeson, M. (2011) ‘Newbold calls for a “Family fund’”, The Age, 26 October, p. 29.Google Scholar
Gordon, H. (1990) The Hard Way: The Story of Hawthorn Football Club, Lester-Townsend, Paddington.Google Scholar
Hyndes, M., Smith, I. (1994) ‘The demand for test match cricket’, Applied Economics Letters, 1(7), pp. 103106.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Leeds, M. A., von Allmen, P. (2011) The Economics of Sports, Fourth edition, Addison Wesley, Boston.Google Scholar
Lenten, L. J. A. (2009) ‘Unobserved components in competitive balance and match attendances in the Australian Football League, 1945–2005: Where is all the action happening?’, Economic Record, 85(269), pp. 181196.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lenten, L. J. A. (2011) ‘Long-run trends and factors in attendance patterns in sport: Australian Football League, 1945–2009’, in Cameron, S. (ed.) Handbook on the Economics of Leisure, Edward-Elgar, Northampton, pp. 360380.Google Scholar
Linnell, G. (1995) Football Ltd: The Inside Story of the AFL, Ironbark, Sydney.Google Scholar
Peel, D., Thomas, D. (1988) ‘Outcome uncertainty and the demand for football: An analysis of match attendances in the English Football League’, Scottish Journal of Political Economy, 35(3), pp. 242249.Google Scholar
Pinnuck, M., Potter, B. (2006) ‘Impact of on-field football success on the off-field financial performance of AFL football clubs’, Accounting and Finance, 46(3), pp. 499517.Google Scholar
Shaw, R. N., McDonald, H. (2005) ‘Relating on-field performance to paid football club membership’, International Journal of Sports Marketing and Sponsorship, 7(1), pp. 6874.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stewart, R. K. (1985) ‘The economic development of the Victorian Football League, 1960–1984’, Sporting Traditions, 1(2), pp. 226.Google Scholar