Football club’s performance can influence students’ choice of university, research finds

Students can be swayed by the performance of English Premier League football clubs when choosing a university, according to new research.

football pitch with spectators on stands

Students can be swayed by the performance of English Premier League (EPL) football clubs when choosing a university, according to new research.

A study led by the University of Stirling suggests that a university may be more attractive for prospective students if its local football team competes at the top level of English football.

Where a university has a name association with a team that loses its place in the EPL for one season or more, it leads to an average 4% to 8% drop in undergraduate admissions, the research found.

The study revealed that relegation from the EPL significantly decreases admissions growth in universities with a name association, by about 7% on average, compared with universities associated with teams that just escaped relegation.

In cases where the associated team bounced back to the EPL after one season, the drop in admissions due to the initial relegation was smaller at around 4%. But the effect on admissions was larger, at 8%, if the associated team did not bounce straight back to the EPL after relegation.

The research is thought to be the first of its kind looking at the link between British football clubs and university admissions outcomes; with just one similar study previously conducted in Europe – considering clubs and universities in Germany.

The study, carried out in collaboration with Birmingham Business School and the University of Reading, used data on annual admissions for UK universities from the Higher Education Statistics Authority, and EPL season data from worldfootball.net.

man with glasses
Dr Carl Singleton
Senior Lecturer in Economics
With the current highly competitive environment in UK higher education, it wouldn’t be surprising to see more clubs attempting to form marketing links with their local football teams, or even other globally visible entities.

Dr Carl Singleton, Senior Lecturer in Economics at the University of Stirling Management School and lead author of the study, said: “While in the USA and Canada there are proven links between the athletic performance of college sports programmes and the quality and quantity of college applications received, there is a dearth of research in the UK and worldwide into how local football teams affect university admissions.

“Our results perhaps explain why UK universities close to three former Premier League teams have recently taken steps to visibly align with their local football teams, namely Reading Football Club and the University of Reading, Portsmouth Football Club and the University of Portsmouth, and Bolton Wanderers and the University of Bolton.”

He added: “With the current highly competitive environment in UK higher education, it wouldn’t be surprising to see more clubs attempting to form marketing links with their local football teams, or even other globally visible entities. Although our study did not find anything conclusive about international recruitment, we know that the University of Manchester, for example, has previously accompanied Manchester United on their pre-season tours in Southeast Asia.”

The researchers excluded small universities with less than 7,000 admissions a year; teams based in Greater London because of the difficultly of associating performance with any one university; and Manchester United and Manchester City, Sheffield United and Sheffield Wednesday, because of the challenge of isolating which football club’s performance might be affecting the local university.

Scoring goals: The impact of English Premier League football teams on local university admissions is published in the November issue of Economics Letters.