A science blog with Eric Berger

Scientist cracks the code on football attendance


As we’re on the cusp of football season, I bring you today important news from the University of Illinois regarding why people watch games live and on TV.

The scientist bringing this enlightenment to the masses is Scott Tainsky, an Illinois professor of recreation, sport and tourism. He’s published a study (see abstract) and his university has kindly issued a news release.

Here’s some highlights:

“Even though the NFL is priced just a little bit below where it could maximize revenue at the gate, it still requires a large income or at least a large outlay of money for the average fan to see a game in-person.”

Got that, folks? The NFL is expensive (You could buy a couple of fancy new iPhones for the same cost of taking a family of four). But let’s dig a little deeper and ask Tainsky why NFL teams actually play the games.

“From the first day of training camp, winning is the goal for every team in the league,” Tainsky said.

In case you missed it, NFL teams like to win.


Extensive new research finds that NFL teams like to win, and football tickets are expensive.

But wait, there’s more. As a professor of sports economics, Tainsky is interested in the important question of what small-market teams should do to attract fans when they’re losing.

One way to do that, Tainsky says, is to promote the experience of going to the game.

“When you’re a small-market team and you’re having a down year, you have to promote other things besides the quality of the team,” Tainsky said. “You have to market the tradition of sports being passed down from generation to generation, this notion of, ‘I went to the game with my dad, and he went with his dad,’ or the ‘On any given Sunday…’ mythology that the NFL likes to cultivate. If you can get this to be a habit of consumption on Sundays, that’s ideal, because it’s easier to take it on the chin when they’re not doing so well.”

Someone get Bill Veeck on the phone. Now that’s some news he could use.

Finally, let’s get to the real heart of the matter. If a city or region has two teams, does that sometimes lead to divided loyalties?

Tainsky said that sharing a home market with another team, as the San Francisco 49ers and the Oakland Raiders do in the Bay Area, represented a significant drag on consumer demand.

Thanks Dr. Tainsky, I’m glad we got all of these misconceptions cleared up.

Eric Berger

24 Responses

  1. bg says:

    I gave up football when the Oilers left town.

  2. Jim Porter says:

    Have they actually detected any footballs using the Large Player Collider yet?

  3. Harry says:

    I wish someone would pay me to do research and tell people what they already know! Professor of Recreation? Sheeeeeeeeeez

  4. Roy_in_SA says:

    A former Secretary of Education (from Houston, guess who?) actually wrote his doctoral dissertation (if you can call it that) in education on football players.

  5. TomTom1978 says:

    No. It’s used as an excuse to start drinking beer at noon on Sundays!

  6. gabriellyn says:


  7. Mo says:

    Wow! Talk about a missed opportunity here. Tainsky could have really gotten some great data about the industry: the competing interests of the owners, coaches, and players; the way money plays a role in sports; how fans’ perceptions interact with all the above. Given the possibility of a work stoppage for the NFL, he could have gone with a game changer and examined football as a microcosm of the economy or something like that. Instead, he wastes his opportunity to be relevant.

  8. StanleyS says:

    Was this research funded on a government grant?

  9. Bewildered says:

    I was thinking about this yesterday. I root for the Texans when I watch football but I don’t think it’s quite right to call me a fan. I don’t know nearly as much about football as real fans do, I’m not into it the way they are.

    I think I watch football because of what it means, the way it feels. Football means fall, winter, cooler temperatures. It means Thanksgiving and Christmas and nice Sunday afternoon dinners. It’s the way it feels as much as anything else, the traditions.

    Plus women famously don’t like football, I know my wife doesn’t. So it’s guy time. What? Come on, it’s only 3 hours a week for 6 months of the year. It’s the guy equivalent of a woman taking one of those 2 hour baths with those stinky candles.

    If you play it right you can project you’re doing it for her. “Well honey, you said you wanted to spend some time with the kids so…”.

    Thank me later, we’re all in this together.

    There. I just put you some science right there. I’m in rare form today.

  10. lil ol me says:

    And this cost us how much?

    I can smell the ink on the grant request all the way down here…

  11. RealRick says:

    A better use of science would be to analyze all the different ways that the Texans have disappointed us and what new way to crush our spirits will they come up with for the 2010 season.

    For that matter, the study could include why the same stream of losing plagued both the Oilers and the Texans, despite completely different owners, players, and management.

    They could identify the staggering amount of energy wasted by fans all pounding on the stadium seat (or sofa) yelling, “No, no, no, ….”.

    Branching out, they could graph the number of convictions per touchdown for the Cowboys under various coaches. They could identify why the Cowboys keep a QB whose main qualification seems to be that he once dated Jessica Simpson.

    Hey, tenure doesn’t grow on trees! Keep grinding out those scientific studies and, if they mention Jessica Simpson or global warming, the news media will be happy to publish some small portion of the results.

  12. almostdallas says:

    I remember when the NFL pandered to the lowest common denominator (read: NASCAR crowd) when they had Hank Jr. wailing “Are yew ready for sum Footbaaaaaawl?” I could almost smell the Jack Daniels wafting through my tv speaker. Good times.

  13. Dena says:

    Hey Bewildered…I think you are hanging out with the wrong women…I LOVE football and so do most of my friends and family…We (Hubby and I) always watch football together…It is a Sunday Tradition…

  14. Brody Roberts says:

    Quick! Someone get Ric Romero on this story!

  15. Rusty Ford says:

    Was a government grant involved in this “study”?


  16. Bill in Houston says:

    Wait a minute, Tainsky is a “professor of recreation, sport and tourism.” Really? I’ve had a theory that I’ve circulated among my friends that goes like this: “No matter what your major, some school somewhere will have it.” Nice to see I was right. No wonder our education system is a laughing stock.

    I’m going to guess that the funding for this study came from Barack Obama’s “stimulus” package.

    I got a good chuckle out of this quote: “When you’re a small-market team and you’re having a down year, you have to promote other things besides the quality of the team.” Yeah, like the revelation that some other team has sucked worse.

    How about, “Remember when your dad used to paint himself Cardinal Red and make a complete idiot of himself at the stadium? You used to hold his bail money. Now its your turn to take your son to the game! Football, making memories for generations!

    Makes me glad I prefer baseball.

  17. COWBOY says:

    Is this the same clown who released the results after years of research, that Mexican food was fattening?

  18. lil ol me says:

    side note: Meiczyslaw:

    that was once of the most refreshing and interesting articles I’ve read in a very long time. Thanks for the link

  19. SAN says:

    So, the study concludes having two pro-level football teams in the same area is bad. Not good.

    Given the monetary outlay already made for the Texans, guess it’s the Katy Tigers who will have to evacuate. Fate is indeed ironic.

    Those guys are good. Year after year.

  20. Jim says:

    When we go to his home page we see that Dr. Tainsky is a labor economist. Winning is everything in football, and the teams that focus on winning are generally the most popular teams. The things that make winning the most likely is brains and money.

    While studying the game last fall it came to my attention that one team was owned by a family that considered it a profit center. Of course, it was not doing very well. Teams that are owned by men that can pour tens of millions into it, tend to win. Teams that are not doing well in one market send their local supporters to the store for a loaf of bread and move away.

    But winning is not everything. When it comes to advertising, when last I looked, Peyton Manning who lost the Superbowl was on a Wheaties box, while Drew Brees who won, has gone unsung. Maybe it is because Manning is in Baltimore inside that area from D.C. to New York that contains 1/3 of the nations population, while Brees is in the nation’s biggest port, in thebiggest crawfish population and near the biggest fish oil distribution center courtesy of BP.

    Football season is here. The players are already out there on the field, sweating, stinking up the locker rooms, praying for cooler weather, and looking forward to a winning season. It is America’s sport. A fast set of legs, a strong set of shoulders and a thick head can propel even a minor athlete to taste victory.

  21. NoWhining says:

    At least it wasn’t something silly as watching the cheerleaders — snark, snark.

  22. Meiczyslaw says:

    @lil ol me:

    You’re welcome.

    One of the article’s conclusions reminded me a little bit of Jonah Lehrer’s book about the brain (How We Decide). A human best handles complex decisions by studying up and then pushing it to the emotional brain. I wonder if we’ve got a cultural “emotional brain” that handles this stuff, and is better adapted for these kinds of decisions than rational discourse.

    (Which, back on topic, means that all Tainsky did is rationalize something we already knew emotionally.)

  23. JD says:

    These academic types love to hear themselves talk and see their names in print.