 Scoring goals: The impact of English Premier League football teams on local university admissionsCarl Singleton, Adrian Bell, Andy Chung, J Reade and Andrew Urquhart Economics Letters, 2024, vol. 244, issue C Abstract: Anecdotal evidence suggests that co-location with an English Premier League (EPL) football team can boost university recruitment. But when a town or city loses its EPL team, it also loses some of the world’s attention. We test whether the EPL limelight does in fact affect university recruitment in England and Wales. We exploit the sharp annual cutoff between survival and relegation from the EPL, comparing the admissions outcomes of universities that have clear name association either side of that discontinuity. On average, losing association with an EPL team, for just one year after its relegation, significantly reduces a university’s undergraduate year-to-year admissions growth by 4–8 percent. These findings suggest not only that the EPL generates local externalities but also that university executives should support their local teams. Keywords: Professional football; Relegation; Local economy; Regression-discontinuity design; Higher education demand (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:ecolet:v:244:y:2024:i:c:s0165176524004415 DOI: 10.1016/j.econlet.2024.111957 Access Statistics for this article Economics Letters is currently edited by Economics Letters Editorial Office More articles in Economics Letters from Elsevier |
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