The Impact of Video Coverage on Football Bowl Subdivision Attendance

Gregory A. Falls and Paul A. Natke

Panel data of 2,243 regular season games for Football Bowl Subdivision teams during 2007-09 are used to examine the relationship between the extent of video coverage and stadium utilization. Results suggest that an advertising effect overwhelms a substitution effect generated by video coverage. After controlling for other variables, national video coverage has a significant and large positive impact on attendance as a percent-age of stadium capacity, but the magnitude of this effect decreases as temperatures rise. Local coverage has a small positive impact only when a temperature-coverage interaction variable is not included. Regional coverage has no impact on capacity utilization.