Competitive intensity, fans' expectations and match day tickets sold in the Italian football Serie A, 2012-2015

This article investigates the impact of the competitive intensity on the stadium attendance for Italian soccer in three Serie A seasons (2012-13 to 2014-15). The central element of novelty concerning the existing literature is that fans expectations are also included among the explanatory variables of the Tobit model. Our results show that competitive intensity has a significant impact on match-day attendance in relation to all the sporting prizes but Europa League qualification. Moreover, we find evidence supporting the existence of reference- dependent preferences, where the attendance increases when the home team rank is higher than the pre-season expectations.