Date of Publication

Spring 4-23-2015

Document Type

Undergraduate Project

Professor's Name

Dr. Katherine Burakowski

Abstract

Competitive balance is a contributing factor in the fluctuation of attendance in international soccer. The importance of this research was to show soccer organizations that competitive balance had some sort of relationship with the attendance of these games. Another reason why this study was important was because it developed further knowledge on this topic. Before conducting this study prior research was done that showed that competitive balance is not the only factor that plays into the fluctuation of attendance. The timing of the games, economy, and certain preferences of the fans were other factors that played in a role in the fluctuation of attendance (Laverie & Arnett, 2000; Parry, Jones & Wann, 2014). The sample of this study was made up of five teams from the Barclays Premier League, Bundesliga, and LigaBBVA. They were chosen based on attendance capacity. A random number generator was used to determine the ten home games that were looked at for each team. A correlation was run to help show if there was a relationship between competitive balance and attendance. The correlation showed that there was a weak significant relationship between competitive balance and attendance. Overall, these findings are significant because they showed that competitive balance does not have a strong relationship with the fluctuation of attendance in international soccer

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