Factors Influencing Football Season Ticket Consumption

Purpose: Spectator behavior is always a major concern of sports marketers. An understanding of sports spectator behavior allows sports managers to promote programs effectively. Numerous researchers have tried to assess sports spectator behavior, however, few studies (i.e. Kahle et al., 1996; Swanson et al., 2003) were conducted to indentify the factors influencing football season ticket consumption. Thus, the purpose of this study was to explore five aspects of purchasing football season ticket. Methods:Survey method with convenience sampling was used in this study. A total of 201 participants (males = 148, females = 53) took part in this study. Around half of the participants were current season ticket holder (54.2%) and married (49.2%). The age range of the participants were 18-24(16.9%); 25-34(23.9%); 35-44(24.4%); 45-54 (21.4%) and 55 and over (13.4%). Part I of the questionnaire consisted of ten questions related to motives to buy football season ticket in a specific Division I football team. Part II of the questionnaire consisted of 17 questions related to their attitude toward this Division I football team. Participants were asked to answer part I and II on a five-point Likert-type scale with “1”-- strongly disagree and “5” – strongly agree. Analysis/Results: The Cronbach Alpha Coefficient of Part I and II was .89 and .91 respectively. The Cronbach Alpha analyses indicated that the questionnaire was internally consistent and reliable. Exploratory factor analyses were conducted in Part I and Part II to indentify the factors affecting football season ticket consumption behavior. Two factors (i.e. reputation, game attractiveness) were retrieved in part I and three factors (entertainments, stadium, and economic) were retrieved in part II. A multiple regression analysis was conducted to evaluate how well the five factors as predictors for football season ticket purchase decision. The linear combination of three out of five factors were significantly related to purchase football season ticket in the upcoming year with adjusted R² = .27. The regression equation is as follows: Predicted Football Season Ticket Purchase Decision = 1.33 + .12 Entertainments + .10 Economic – .07 Game Attractiveness. Conclusions: The finding revealed that entertainment, economic and game attractiveness were essential factors for the purchase decision on football season ticket. Surprisingly, reputation and stadium factors were excluded in the stepwise analysis. Thus, sport administrator should further investigate factors that underline patterns of game attendance in order to promote football ticket sale.