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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
Liam J. A. Lenten*
Affiliation:
La Trobe University, Melbourne, Australia
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Abstract

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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.

Keywords

C14L83Demandmarketssports club membershipsporting match attendancesports economics
Type
Symposium
Information
The Economic and Labour Relations Review , Volume 23 , Issue 2: Sport Economics , June 2012 , pp. 23 - 38
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.

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