Do Fans Matter? The Effect of Attendance on the Outcomes of Major League Baseball Games

Smith Erin E and Groetzinger Jon D.
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Smith Erin E: New York University
Groetzinger Jon D.: SeatGeek

Journal of Quantitative Analysis in Sports, 2010, vol. 6, issue 1, 24

Abstract: We examine the role of attendance in home-field advantage for Major League Baseball, using a dataset of all MLB games played from 1996 to 2005. Using two-stage least squares, we find that attendance has a significant effect on the home-field advantage. Our results indicate that a one standard deviation increase in attendance results in a 4% increase in the likelihood of a home team win. We also find that if attendance as a percent of stadium capacity were to increase by 48%, we would expect the home team's run differential to increase by one run. We show that the additional home-field advantage is driven by increased home team performance.

Keywords: baseball; attendance; fans; home-field advantage (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2010
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (11)

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DOI: 10.2202/1559-0410.1192

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