Prediction of sports attendance: A comparative analysis

Abstract

In this study, a comparative analysis for predicting sports attendance demand is presented based on econometric, artificial intelligence, and machine learning methodologies. Data from more than 20,000 games from three major leagues, namely the National Basketball Association (NBA), National Football League (NFL), and Major League Baseball (MLB), were used for training and testing the approaches. The relevant literature was examined to determine the most useful variables as potential regressors in forecasting. To reveal the most effective approach, three scenarios containing seven cases were constructed. In the first scenario, each league was evaluated separately. In the second scenario, the three possible combinations of league pairings were evaluated, while in the third scenario, all three leagues were evaluated together. The performance evaluations of the results suggest that one of the machine learning methods, Gradient Boosting, outperformed the other methods used. However, the Artificial Neural Network, deep Convolutional Neural Network, and Decision Trees also provided productive and competitive predictions for sports games. Based on the results, the predictions for the NBA and NFL leagues are more satisfactory than the predictions of the MLB, which may be caused by the structure of the MLB. The results of the sensitivity analysis indicate that the performance of the home team is the most influential factor for all three leagues.