Measuring the Motives of Sport Event Attendance: Bridging the Academic-Practitioner Divide to Understanding Behavior

Abstract

The ability to draw attendees to performances is vital to the success of a sport organization. As a result, sport managers and academics attempt to investigate motivations that drive decisions to attend events. In order to make predictions, academic demands have lead to the proliferation of instruments and constructs to capture a wide variety of motives, but these tools have limited ability to explain game attendance; and practitioners demand shorter scales to increase efficiency. The purpose of this research is to provide a parsimonious measuring tool of motives to explain sport event attendance. A 10-item scale was distributed to sport spectators and the general population (N = 2831) to measure five facets of motivation: Socialization, Performance, Excitement, Esteem and Diversion (SPEED). Confirmatory factor analysis confirmed the psychometric properties of the SPEED scale. MANOVA results indicate the five SPEED motives are able to differentiate prior game attendance behavior. Multiple Linear Regression results indicate three facets explain 30% of the variance in the frequency of game attendance. The SPEED scale also demonstrated the ability to explain 75% of the variance in team commitment. Suggestions are made for further application and employment of the SPEED scale, along with the marketing of Excitement, Performance and Esteem.