Estimating Consumer Spending on Tickets, Merchandise, and Food and Beverage: A Case Study of a NHL Team

Game day spending is critical for National Hockey League (NHL) teams' profitability as nearly half the NHL franchises generate more than two-thirds of their annual income from ticket sales. The purpose of our study was to analyze financial data for 123 regular season home games to understand the influence of day of week, special promotions, opponent, month in season, time of game, and season on ticket sales, merchandise per cap sales, and food and beverage per cap sales for a NHL team. Ordinary Least Squares regression results revealed that the game day variables included in the models explained 52% of the variance in ticket sales, 70% of the variance in merchandise per cap sales, and 48% of the variance in food and beverage per cap sales (p < .05). Findings provide practical implications for teams who hope to maximize game day revenue.