Stadium attendance demand during the COVID-19 crisis: Early empirical evidence from Belarus

J Reade, Dominik Schreyer and Carl Singleton

No em-dp2020-20, Economics Discussion Papers from Department of Economics, University of Reading

Abstract: In this note, we consider early evidence regarding behavioural responses to an emerging public health emergency. We explore patterns in stadium attendance demand by exploiting match-level data from the Belarusian Premier League (BPL), a football competition that kept playing unrestricted in front of spectators throughout the global COVID-19 pandemic, unlike all other European professional sports leagues. We observe that stadium attendance demand in Belarus declined significantly in the initial period of maximum uncertainty. Surprisingly, demand then slowly recovered, despite the ongoing inherent risk to individuals from going to a match.

Keywords: Attendance; COVID-19; Football/soccer; Spectator decision-making; public health (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D12 D81 D90 H12 I18 L83 Z20 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 13 pages
Date: 2020-07-14
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cis, nep-hea, nep-ore and nep-spo
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (9)

Published in Applied Economics Letters, 2021, 28(18): 1542-1547, https://doi.org/10.1080/13504851.2020.1830933

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Journal Article: Stadium attendance demand during the COVID-19 crisis: early empirical evidence from Belarus (2021)
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