Restricted accessOtherFirst published online 2015-9
What Factors Determine the Fans’ Willingness to Pay for Bundesliga Tickets? An Analysis of Ticket Sales in the Secondary Market Using Data from ebay.de
In 2009, the San Francisco Giants of the United States’ Major League Baseball was the first sports club to implement a dynamic pricing system, and since that time many sport organizations have followed suit. To date, however, no German sports club has applied dynamic pricing. This paper lays the ground for such a development by identifying determinants of fans’ willingness to pay for Bundesliga tickets. The current study evaluates ticket sales in the German secondary market. Ticket prices of eBay auctions were collected daily during the second half of the Bundesliga season 2013-14. A data set of 6,510 auctions was analyzed by means of a two stage least squares regression. Results suggest that tickets in the secondary market are resold for nearly twice as much as the original face value of the ticket. The final model includes 23 significant variables and explains 59.6% of the variance. The overall results are comparable to previous studies, although there are a number of unique aspects to the current paper. Sport managers can apply these finding to further differentiate their current variable ticket pricing strategy or to implement a more sophisticated dynamic pricing approach.
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