Who’s in the Stands? An In-Depth Look at Arena and Stadium Visits
Learn how location intelligence can reveal the psychographic and demographic characteristics of any in-person audience.
By:
on
February 9, 2023
After coming almost to a standstill during the pandemic, live in-person events have returned in a big way. Stadiums and arenas – which host a variety of sporting events – are experiencing record attendance. But while it’s clear that in-person attendance is booming, it’s less apparent who these visitors are.
Big crowds present big opportunities for advertising and marketers in the live entertainment space. Whether it’s the Super Bowl or a concert, location analytics illuminate the previously unknown attributes of fans in the stands. Which dining options will resonate with guests? How do fans make purchasing decisions? Does a team’s performance impact stadium visits? And much more.
This white paper explores the hidden side of stadium crowds. Using location intelligence, we uncovered the demographic and psychographic traits of sporting events attendees. These metrics can be used to inform marketing strategy and tailor the guest experience to maximize ROI.
We also looked at data for previous Super Bowls to understand what characterizes these particular sports fans, what has changed and what has remained constant since 2019, and what can be expected from the crowd at this year’s Super Bowl LVII.
The pandemic forced virtually all in-person events to come to a screeching halt. But as entertainment venues started to welcome back crowds in the spring of 2021, eager fans once again began to fill the stands. By the end of 2022, stadium and arena visits were up 44% compared to the first week of January 2020.
It should be noted that the declining visits beginning during the final months of 2021 and 2022 (September through December) reflect a seasonal transition from the baseball to basketball and football seasons and not a declining interest in spectatorship. Baseball teams play more games than basketball and football teams which is reflected in the declining total number of visitors to stadiums and arenas during these months.
Zooming in on the venues that host the nation’s most popular professional sports leagues – MLB, NFL, and NBA – demonstrates how, depending on the time of year, some venues claim a greater share of attendance than others.
The graph below shows the changing attendance between the three leagues. In broad strokes, the NBA claims the lion’s share of visits from January through March, which is the majority of the league’s regular season. MLB dominates visits from April through September during its regular season and the NBA and NFL have a similar visit share from October through the end of the year which spans the bulk of the NFL regular season and into the first half of the NBA regular season – an especially strong sign for NFL attendance considering the far fewer games.
From a marketing perspective, this data illustrates the “eyeballs reach” of ads in various venues and across professional sports. While football stadiums typically have a larger spectator capacity than baseball stadiums and basketball arenas, football teams only play once a week whereas baseball and basketball teams play multiple games a week. Therefore, the start of the football and basketball seasons represent a decline in total in-person viewership, while the potential reach of ads in individual stadiums increases.
The distinct visit numbers and visit seasonality patterns of MLB, NFL, and NBA game attendees are not the only thing setting the fans of the different sports apart. Location intelligence reveals that the audience in the stands at various types of sporting events also exhibit clear demographic and psychographic differences. This section will dive deeper into the data to understand the diverse backgrounds, interests, and behavioral characteristics of event attendees.
Many of America’s biggest cities are home to multiple professional teams – and although these teams play out of the same region, location intelligence reveals that they attract diverse fanbases. For example, the Miami, FL metropolitan area is home to the NHL’s Florida Panthers, the NFL’s Miami Dolphins, and the NBA’s Miami Heat – and each team draws a different crowd.
The Miami Heat basketball team attracts the highest percentage of visitors from “Power Elites” households (26.8%) – the wealthiest families in America according to the Experian: Mosaic dataset. Meanwhile, as per the AGS: Consumer Expenditures dataset, attendees at Miami Dolphins football games come from households with the highest annual spend on beer, snacks, and non-alcoholic beverages. These metrics suggest that it may be more effective to advertise high-end products to spectators at a Miami Heat game but that a Dolphins game has the potential for higher concession spending.
But a potential for spending doesn’t necessarily motivate fans to open their wallets. Purchasing decisions are heavily influenced by advertising inside venues and on television. However, not all fans are receptive to the same style of ads, and these preferences can vary depending on the sport being spectated. So, which ads shown in the arena and on TV are most likely to resonate with fans?
Comparing basketball and hockey fans attending games at United Center in Chicago, IL and Wells Fargo Center in Philadelphia, PA shows that the answer might be very different depending on the contest taking place. According to the AGS Behavior & Attitudes dataset, the trade areas reflective of potential visitors to both venues during NBA games contained a higher percentage of “Celebrity Influenced Buyers” than the trade areas during NHL games. This knowledge could inform not just the type of ads displayed in the arena but also the advertisements shown during the TV streaming of the game, as it’s likely that fans of the sport watching at home share a similar affinity for celebrities.
It’s not just fans of different sports that can have disparate preferences and behaviors. Madison Square Garden in New York, NY and Barclays Center in Brooklyn, NY are located roughly five miles apart and both host sports and concerts. Yet the demographic and psychographic profiles of their visitors can vary greatly.
Analysis of True Trade Areas representative of visitors to the two venues during Q4 2022 shows that the Garden had a significantly wider trade area of 493.5 square miles while Barclays had a trade area of just 77.8 square miles. It appears that a majority of visitors to Barclays come from a more localized area of Brooklyn and Manhattan while the Garden draws more visitors from the greater New York Area. These trade areas could have far-reaching implications for the types of events and advertising that would be most successful at each venue.
With its trade area spanning many suburbs of New York City, it is unsurprising that the Garden’s visitors are more likely to fall within Experian: Mosaic dataset’s “Suburban Style” household segment, which includes middle-aged suburban couples and families earning upscale incomes. On the other hand, Barclays’ condensed, urban trade area has a higher than average percentage of “Significant Singles” – diversely aged singles earning mid-scale incomes who live active city lifestyles.
These contrasting visitor segmentations likely contribute to the different attitudes and behaviors of the typical visitors to the two arenas. According to the AGS Behaviors & Attitudes dataset, visitors to Barclays are more likely to be driven by brand name fashion and the season’s newest looks, while visitors to the Garden are more likely to be interested in hybrid cars and vegan cuisine. An understanding of the different types of visitors found at each venue could help brands and the arenas identify the best advertising partnerships to ensure that the advertised products reach the right audience.
Using this year’s Super Bowl teams as examples reveals that not only can different arenas draw different crowds, but individual stadiums of the same sport can see distinct visitor behavior. The Kansas City Chiefs (the AFC Champions) and the Philadelphia Eagles (the NFC Champions) are set to duke it out at this year’s Super Bowl LVII.
To understand the impact of a team’s performance on fan attendance, we analyzed loyal visitor rates for the home stadiums of this year’s Super Bowl’s contenders – Arrowhead Stadium in Kansas City, MI and Lincoln Financial Field in Philadelphia, PA. We then compared these numbers to the loyal visitor rates among home game attendees for the teams with the worst records of the 2022 regular season – the AFC’s Houston Texans and the NFC’s Chicago Bears.
Of all four teams’ home game visitors, the Eagles’ and Chiefs’ stadiums had a higher percentage of loyal visitors – fans who were in attendance a minimum of two, three, or four times during the 2022 regular season. Meanwhile, the Bears (Soldier Field) and Texans (NRG Stadium) had the lowest percentage of loyal visitors for all three comparisons. It appears that in terms of repeat visits, winning matters, and the most successful teams are the ones that fans want to see play again and again.
It seems that Super Bowl contenders – and perhaps teams having a successful season in general – draw more repeat visitors during the season than teams with less frequent wins. But what happens to visit metrics during the biggest game of the season, when the most successful teams duke it out for the title?
As the biggest game of the year, the Super Bowl usually brings a tourism boom to the host city. The heat map below depicts the origins of travelers to the past three Super Bowls (excluding Super Bowl LV in 2021 which was held under COVID restrictions). Year after year, the distribution of Super Bowl attendees is relatively similar to the country’s population distribution – which means, perhaps unsurprisingly, that the most densely populated regions are well-represented at the game.
But the data also reveals that many Super Bowl attendees travel from the regions where the competing teams are based, which indicates that die-hard fans are willing to make the trip to see their local team potentially win a championship. The map also shows that visitors from the Super Bowl’s host city and surrounding areas are heavily represented at the game, regardless of whether or not a local team is playing. It’s likely that a significant number of football fans who live nearby take advantage of the rare opportunity to see a Super Bowl close to home.
Super Bowl LVI in 2022, for example, was played at SoFi Stadium in Los Angeles, CA between the Cincinnati Bengals and the Los Angeles Rams. The event was heavily visited by fans from Southern California as the game was not only being played by the LA Rams, but also at their home stadium in Inglewood, CA. A greater contingent than previous years was also in attendance from Cincinnati, OH and its surrounding areas.
For Super Bowl tourists in the host city, food is a big part of the game experience. And for the host city, Super Bowl foot traffic provides an economic boost to the local dining sector and the city as a whole.
Western U.S. cities in particular have a lot to gain from hosting the Super Bowl. For the last several years, the Super Bowl has kicked off at 6:30pm ET which means that Super Bowls hosted in western U.S. time zones adjust to start earlier and end earlier locally. As a result, a host city in the Pacific or Mountain time zone can capitalize on post-game restaurant foot traffic since there’s still time to grab dinner or a celebratory bite outside the stadium after the game.
At the 2022 Super Bowl held in California, 14% of attendees visited a restaurant after the game while 3.9% and 5.2% of visitors did so after the 2019 and 2020 contests in Atlanta and Florida, respectively. It’s no surprise that ahead of this year’s upcoming game in Arizona, local restaurateurs have been making extensive preparations for 2023’s Super Bowl dining surge. When the on-field action ends on Super Bowl Sunday, host cities and their restaurants, especially in the West, continue to experience significant post-game foot traffic.
Since 2019, the True Trade Areas of the Super Bowl stadiums include increasingly greater shares of larger families. Last year’s Super Bowl LVI had an in-person audience that reflected a trade area in which 17.9% of residents came from families of five or more, up from 11.9% at the Super Bowl three years prior. Conversely, Super Bowl attendees in 2022 reflected a trade area in which 37.7% of residents were part of two-person households, a decrease from 47.8% in 2019.
The increase in attendees from areas with larger families could reflect the NFL’s initiatives to make football a more family-friendly sport, including rule and equipment changes aimed at increasing player safety and supporting youth football clubs. The trend towards an increase in attendees from larger families may also inform decisions about products to promote as well as amenities that will contribute to a family-friendly experience on game day.
So far, we’ve shown how location intelligence can provide general insights into sporting event attendance profiles. For example, our analysis indicates that the Miami Heat basketball team attracts the highest percentage of visitors from the wealthiest families in the country but Miami Dolphins football games attract more households with high annual snack and beverage spending. We also showed how NBA games at United Center in Chicago and Wells Fargo Center in Philadelphia draw a higher percentage of Celebrity Influenced Buyers than NHL games. And finally, the data indicates that Madison Square Garden in New York commands a wider, suburban audience while Barclays Center dominates a condensed, metropolitan market.
Location analytics also reveal that many Super Bowl attendees travel from the same urban centers from year to year while others are hometown fans of the competing teams. The data also makes clear that food and sports betting are significant motivators of the Super Bowl crowd and that the game is being trafficked by more members of large-family households in recent years.
Growing stadium and arena crowds present an enormous advertising opportunity year-round. But in order to maximize ROI of any experiential marketing strategy, executives rely on in-depth visitor insights. Guest characteristics are dependent on the venue and type of event, emphasizing the need for accurate and near real-time analytics of specific audiences.
Brands invest heavily in ads that air during the Super Bowl. But with the right insights, stadium advertising platforms have tremendous potential to reach target audiences in-person at the big game. While a large audience is part of the equation, in order to achieve maximum impact, an in-depth understanding of visitors is critical.
Arena and stadium attendance bounced back once COVID restrictions lifted. By the end of 2022, stadium and arena visits were up 44% nationwide compared to January 2020.
Different sports attract different proportions of high-value foot traffic and big food and beverage spenders. For example, fans at Miami Dolphins football games are likely to spend more on concessions while a higher percentage of Miami Heat fans come from the wealthiest population segment.
Fans of different sports appear to have different interests that marketers can take into account. Psychographic analysis of attendees at NHL and NBA games at United Center in Chicago, IL and Wells Fargo Center in Philadelphia, PA shows that basketball games attract a higher percentage of celebrity influenced buyers than do hockey games.
Two arenas in close proximity to each other can have vastly different visitor profiles. New York City’s Madison Square Garden and Barclays Center command trade areas of different sizes and potential audience profiles. While the Garden attracts a more suburban, and environmentally-conscious guest, Barclays visitors tend to come from urban centers and be far more fashion-conscious.
Winning matters, and the most successful teams are the ones that fans want to see play again and again. During the regular season, the respective stadiums of the 2022 NFC Champion Eagles and the AFC Champion Chiefs had a higher percentage of repeat visitors than the worst performing teams in the league.
Many Super Bowl attendees come from the nation’s metropolitan centers as well as the host stadium’s surrounding areas and the competing teams’ hometowns. Super Bowl LVI in 2022, played at SoFi Stadium in Los Angeles, CA between the Cincinnati Bengals and the Los Angeles Rams, was heavily visited by fans from the Cincinnati, OH area and also Southern California as the game was not only being played by the Rams but also in the local stadium.
Location intelligence provides valuable insights into Super Bowl attendees’ behaviors and backgrounds. A Super Bowl host city in the western US can capitalize on post-game restaurant foot traffic since there’s still time to grab food outside the stadium after the game. And Since 2019, the True Trade Areas of the Super Bowl stadiums are shifting to include a growing number of larger families, representing football’s growing traction among family-oriented visitors.
