Positive Externalities from Professional Football Clubs in the Metropolitan Rhine-Ruhr, Germany: Trickle-Down Effects Associated with Promotion and Relegation

Hyunwoong Pyun (), Jeeyoon Kim, Torsten Schlesinger and Luca Matto
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Jeeyoon Kim: Department of Sport Management, Syracuse University, Syracuse, NY 13244, USA
Torsten Schlesinger: Department of Sport Management, Ruhr University Bochum, 44801 Bochum, Germany
Luca Matto: Department of Sport Management, Ruhr University Bochum, 44801 Bochum, Germany

Sustainability, 2020, vol. 12, issue 20, 1-12

Abstract: Hosting sport events is costly, but the positive impact of hosting sport events has not been studied well. We consider the promotion of physical activity, known as the trickle-down effect, to be a new dimension of this kind of impact. Using exogenous variations in promotion and relegation in the Bundesliga 1, we test the effect of the presence of a Bundesliga 1 club on local non-profit football club membership. Using German city-level annual non-profit sport club membership data from the metropolitan Rhine-Ruhr, we group cities with experience of either promotion or relegation as treatment cities and other cities as the comparison group. Difference-in-difference analyses show that promotion (using a strict definition of promotion) of local professional football clubs increases non-profit football club membership by 14% while relegation does not affect membership. The presence of Bundesliga 1 clubs in a city increases non-profit football club membership by 11%. Falsification tests support the idea that the impact of promotion on membership results in a net increase in membership.

Keywords: trickle-down effect; German sport club; promotion and relegation; Bundesliga (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

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