2019 NFL Attendance Analysis

Here is a quick look at regular season home attendance over the 2002-2019 NFL regular seasons, using total league home game attendance data from profootballreference.

First, overall, total league home game attendance dropped in 2019 by 137,542 fans.  While the drop seems large, historically this total league home game attendance decline is not unusual - and compared to the previous season - is not a statistically significant drop in total league home game attendance.  For those interested in a graph of total league home game attendance, here it is.

Second, in terms of increases in team home game attendance from the previous season, the five biggest gainers were:

Team		Change
Washington Redskins		35679
Buffalo Bills		31018
Indianapolis Colts		15288
Cleveland Browns		13326
San Francisco 49ers		9253

In terms of decreases in team home game attendance from the previous season, the five biggest gainers were:

Team		Change
Jacksonville Jaguars		-47903
Oakland Raiders		-35042
Cincinnati Bengals		-28596
Kansas City Chiefs		-20057
Miami Dolphins		-19940

 Yet, overall team home game attendance is not different from the 2018 team home game attendance in a statistically significant manner.

2019 MLB Attendance Analysis

Today I want to focus on MLB fan behavior by looking at MLB team regular season attendance.  To do this, I grabbed the data off of ESPN’s website.  So let’s look at the 2019 regular season attendance data.  First, a total of 68,478,648 attended (or at least bought tickets) to regular season MLB games this past season.  The LA Dodgers had the highest total attendance (3,974,309 fans) and the Miami Marlins had the lowest total attendance (811,302 fans).  The average number of fans over the season was 2,282,622; with a standard deviation of 762,879.

Compared to the previous season, overall attendance at MLB regular season games was down by over 1.7 million fans with the largest declines by Toronto (-575,137) and Seattle (-507,552).  Those two franchises represent over half of the total decline in MLB regular season attendance alone.  The average decline in fan attendance was (-39,036) from the previous season.  So, was this a (statistically) significant decline in MLB attendance?  To answer that question, I will use a t-test, which is a statistical measure of the relationship between two variables and then allows one to determine the degree of confidence that the two variables have to each other.  The t-test for regular season team attendance from the 2018 to 2019 seasons results in 0.3944.  The standard threshold for a t-test to be statistically significant is 0.0500.  Thus since the t-test is above 0.0500, I conclude that while the change in regular season team attendance declined from 2018 to 2019, it did not decline in a statistically significant manner.

Attendance at College Football

Earlier this year I had some research published on the demand for college football, where the paper looked at college football as a two part tariff (price) where someone who wanted to go to a college football game needs to pay a membership fee (athletic club) and then pay to buy the ticket for a seat.  I found that not including the membership fee in the analysis results in consumers looking like they are price inelastic and if you do include the membership fee then college football fans are price elastic.

Recently Rob Baumann and myself were interviewed as to why attendance is dropping for college football (in FBS).  Here is a link to that report:  At the end of the audio report it mentions that more college football stadiums are offering alcohol for legally aged general admission spectators.  My current research says that selling alcohol at FBS stadiums does NOT significantly affect attendance.

MLB Attendance Analysis

For the last three days I have blogged about Major League Baseball.  Today I want to focus on MLB fan behavior by looking at MLB team regular season attendance.  To do this, I grabbed the data off of ESPN’swebsite.  The 2017 & 2018 data can be found here.  So let’s look at the 2018 regular season attendance data.  First, a total of 69,649,736 attended (or at least bought tickets) to regular season MLB games this past season.  The LA Dodgers had the highest total attendance (3,857,500 fans) and the Miami Marlins had the lowest total attendance (811,104 fans).  The average number of fans over the season was 2,321,658, with a standard deviation of 742,203.

Compared to the previous season, overall attendance at MLB regular season games was down by over 3 million fans with the largest declines by Toronto (-878,605) and Miami (-840,893).  Those two franchises represent over half of the total decline in MLB regular season attendance alone.  The average decline in fan attendance was (-100,690) from the previous season.  So, was this a (statistically) significant decline in MLB attendance?  To answer that question, I will use a t-test, which is a statistical measure of the relationship between two variables and then allows one to determine the degree of confidence that the two variables have to each other.  The t-test for regular season team attendance from the 2017 to 2018 seasons results in 0.0954.  The standard threshold for a t-test to be statistically significant is 0.0500.  Thus since the t-test is above 0.0500, I conclude that while the change in regular season team attendance declined from 2017 to 2018, it did not decline in a statistically significant manner.

2017 NCAA FBS Attendance

Recently the NCAA posted the attendance data for the 2017 season.  So let's take a look what happened in terms of attendance in the football bowl subdivision.  First thing to notice is that average team season attendance is the lowest it has been since 2008's average season attendance of 291,053 to 264,397 in 2017.  Average attendance this past season decreased by 7,485 which is the largest decline since the 2013 to 2014 season decline of 10,441 fans per team on average.  The correlation of average season attendance from the 2016 to 2017 season is 0.9699 which is almost identical from one season to another since the 2006 to 2007 seasons.

Given this decline in average season attendance, the question is if the decline is statistically significant.  In order to determine this I calculated a pairwise t-test on the average season attendance over the last two seasons.  Using a 95% confidence level, which is standard in statistics, I find that the pairwise t-test "fails to accept" that the two seasons are statistically significant different from each other.  So while attendance is down, it is not significantly down.

Has the NFL Player Protests Led to Lower NFL Regular Season Home Game Attendance?

Has the NFL Player Protests Led to Lower NFL Regular Season Home Game Attendance?  During the 2017 NFL season, some NFL players knelt during the playing of the national anthem.  Vice President Pence left one game after the players knelt and President Trump also voiced concerns about the NFL players protesting during the national anthem.  Some NFL fans have proposed boycotting NFL games due to the players actions, although its impact is not clear.

Now that the regular season is over, let's take a look at the numbers and see if there is a statistically significant change in NFL regular season home game attendance.  First, the numbers.  Using the NFL attendance data from Pro Football Reference, I looked at the 2002 to 2017 NFL regular seasons.  This is a time period where the number of teams remained constant at 32 (even though some teams moved cities or stadium capacity changed).  Given the relative stability during this time period, it is easier to make season to season comparisons.  As you can see below, 2016 had the highest total regular season home game attendance, followed by a rather large decrease in 2017.  Also notice, that NFL regular season total home game attendance increases and decreases from season to season.



Let's look at that dip from 2016 to 2017.  That represents a decline of 535246 total fans for the 2017 season as compared to the leagues high water mark in 2016.  Over half of the decline is due to the Los Angeles Chargers playing in a much smaller stadium that in the past.  The Los Angeles Rams, the Cincinnati Bengals and the Washington Redskins also had sharp declines in total home game attendance.  Of the 32 teams, 22 had declines in total home game attendance, 9 had increases in attendance and 1 team (Philadelphia) had no change in total home game attendance as compared to 2016.  In percentage terms, attendance is down 3.1% from 2016 overall, and taking out the LA Chargers, total home game attendance is down 1.6%.  There is no doubt that NFL regular season total home game attendance is down from 2016.

But other seasons have seen declines in home game attendance, even without NFL player national anthem protests.  So a decline in attendance from one season to another is not unusual.  What I want to know is if this decline is unusual as compared to the ups and downs of NFL regular season team home attendance, and the way to determine that is if the team's home attendance is statistically different from last season to this season.

To do that i will use a statistical technique called a t-test.  Specifically, I am using a paired, two-tailed t-test; paired since the same teams have been in the NFL since 2002 and two-tailed since attendance can go up or down for each team from one season to the next.  A t-test is a statistical technique that compares the means of two variables and tells us if they are different from each other, and lets us know if they are significantly different as opposed to them happening by chance.  Statistical significant is the way to judge whether the results are meaningful.  In general we use an error rate less than 5% (p value <=0.05) to judge whether two variables (like NFL team home game attendance from one season to the next) are different from each other.  We choose a low error rate to avoid Type I error, which is to incorrectly conclude the existence of something that does not exist.

So what are the results?  First, from 2002 to 2016, none of the paired, two-tailed t-tests for NFL team home attendance are statistically significant.  Even the "great recession" of 2007 to 2009 did not yield a statistically significant difference in NFL team regular season home game attendance, even though we see attendance declining during that time period.  If something that large did not impact the NFL team regular season home game attendance, would a fan boycott?

Using the same paired, two-tailed t-test, I find that team regular season home game attendance was not statistically significant, and as such I cannot conclude that the NFL players protests during the national anthem lead to a decline in attendance as opposed to NFL team regular season home game attendance decreased due to random chance.

2017 MLB Regular Season Attendance

Today I will look at regular season home attendance in MLB.  To do so I grabbed the data from ESPN. First thing to note is that overall regular season attendance has decreased by 488,645 fans from the 2016 regular season and the 2016 regular season dropped by about 600,000 fans from the 2015 season.  Yes, that is a million fewer people attended a MLB game in 2017 as compared to 2015.

The three largest attendance declines were Kansas City (-337,342), Pittsburgh (-329,574) and the New York Mets (-328,980), and the three largest attendance increases were Atlanta (484,338), Cleveland (456,471) and Colorado (351,126).

While total attendance and average attendance are lower this regular season as compared to the 2016 regular season, is it statistically different from the previous regular season?  We need a statistical tool to determine if attendance is different between the two regular seasons with some degree of confidence.  The statistical tool I use is a t-test as the means to perform the analysis.

A t-test looks at the differences between attendance for two regular seasons average home attendance and allows us to judge the difference between their means relative to the variability of their regular season average home attendance.  You can quickly perform a t-test in Microsoft Excel =t.test(...).  I choose to use a two tailed test, since regular season average home attendance can increase and decrease as compared to the previous regular season.

I am going to look at regular season average home attendance for the 2016 and 2017 MLB season, just like I did for the 2016 MLB regular season.  The reason I am looking at average attendance is that not all teams play the same number of home games from one season to the next and using the average is a much more accurate for comparing one season to another.

So after running the t-test between the 2016 and 2017 regular season home attendance using a paired t-test, a t-tests where the sample variance is assumed to be equal, and a t-test where the sample variance is not assumed to be unequal; in each case, the result of the t-test is that it fails to accept (rejects) that regular season average home attendance is different between the two seasons.

That might not be much consolation to the Royals, Pirates and Mets, but the decline in attendance is not significant as compared to the prior regular season.

NCAA Football Bowl Subdivision Attendance Analysis

Today I want to look at NCAA FBS Home Game Attendance over the last eleven years.  I gathered the data from the NCAA's website and have plotted the data below for each season from 2006 to 2016 (last year).  Please note that I am using total home regular season attendance, and since some teams do play different amounts of home games from one year to the next, this might be skewing the data.  But as you can see below, most teams attendance from one season to the next looks fairly similar.  Yet, looks can be deceiving, so below I talk about a simple statistical analysis of home team regular season attendance.




Using a t-test, which is a statistical test of significance among columns (seasons) of data; I find that comparing consecutive seasons, that no sets of consecutive seasons are statistically different from each other.  Yes, teams attendance and league average attendance have increased and recently decreased during this time period, but I cannot rule out random chance for this occurring as well.  Thus, I would conclude that statistically, NCAA FBS attendance is not statistically different in consecutive seasons during this time period.