Study: Colts Fans Among ‘Most Loyal’
Subscriber Benefit
As a subscriber you can listen to articles at work, in the car, or while you work out. Subscribe NowA university study is ranking Indianapolis Colts fans among the most loyal and supportive in the National Football League. The Emory University research considered factors including ticket revenues, on-field success and stadium capacity. August 15, 2013
News Release
ATLANTA, Geo. – The NFL is America's favorite professional sports league, but which of its teams has the most loyal and supportive fan base? This is not a straightforward question. A ranking based on attendance would be skewed toward teams that play in more populated metropolitan areas, and a ranking based on profitability or revenues would be biased in favor of teams that are currently enjoying more on-field success.
In our series of fan base analyses across leagues, we adjust for these complicating factors using a revenue premium model of fan equity. The key idea is that we look at team box office revenues relative to team on-field success, market population, stadium capacity, median income and other factors. The first step in our procedure involves the creation of a statistical model that predicts box office revenue as a function of the aforementioned variables. We then compare actual revenues to the revenues predicted by the model. Teams with relatively stronger fan support will have revenues that exceed the predicted values, and teams that under perform have relatively less supportive fan bases. We provide more details on the method here: https://blogs.emory.edu/sportsmarketing/2013/05/17/follow-up-to-the-nba-fan-equity-study-why-we-do-this/ and here: https://blogs.emory.edu/sportsmarketing/2013/07/23/revenue-premium-versus-survey-based-attitudinal-measures/.
The top fan base was the Dallas Cowboys. Professor Lewis grew up a Steelers fan in the 1970s so this was a bit of a painful result. Professor Tripathi grew up as a Redskins fan, and is terribly disturbed by the results of the study. What are keys to the Cowboys' ability to create a passionate and supportive fan base? We think it's a long legacy of success, a football mad Texas culture and a state of the art stadium. Over the last three seasons (the time period used to calculate fan equity) the Cowboys have played sub .500 football but generated above capacity attendance (at least according to ESPN).
In positions two and three we have the New England Patriots and the New York Jets. New England has an all-around strong fan base, while the Jets are somewhat similar to the Cowboys in that they draw consistently well, regardless of the on-field product. In fourth and fifth place we have the New Orleans Saints and the New York Giants. The Saints are a more recent success story, but the team's new success combined with limited professional sports options in New Orleans has created a very strong fan base. Two New York teams in the top five is an interesting result when viewed in relation to our college football fan base analyses. New York is (no surprise here) a pro sports town. As an aside, we will be interested to see how much value the Big Ten gains from acquiring a foothold in the NYC market starting in 2014.
At the more unfortunate end of the scale we have a bottom five of Detroit, Tampa Bay, Arizona, Atlanta and Oakland. Detroit, of course, suffers from a relative lack of on-field success and a struggling local economy. But we should note that our method does explicitly control for these factors. It may well be a matter of the Wolverines & Spartans winning the battle for fans against the Lions. Similarly, teams like Atlanta and Tampa Bay may suffer from being located in SEC territory.
Source: Emory University