Cristiano of Arabia: Did Ronaldo increase Saudi Pro League attendances?

Citation

Schreyer D & Singleton C (2024) Cristiano of Arabia: Did Ronaldo increase Saudi Pro League attendances?. Contemporary Economic Policy.

Abstract
In December 2022, Cristiano Ronaldo, five-time Ballon d'Or winner and the most-followed person on Instagram, signed a reported €200million contract to play football in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) for two and a half years. This marked one of several recent ground-shaking and expensive interventions by the KSA in global sports markets. We exploit the timing of this event, midway through a season of the Saudi Pro League, to estimate superstar effects. There are clear patterns showing that Ronaldo alone increased stadium attendance demand in the KSA, even before the influx of further stars in the summer of 2023. On average, Ronaldo helped to fill an additional 20% of the seats in his home team's stadium when he played, 15% of the seats in the stadiums he visited, and 3% of the seats where he did not even play. These effects may be the tip of the iceberg in terms of what policymakers will be hoping for. Regardless, they demonstrate that the astronomical sums being invested in sports markets by the Saudi state are not necessarily a total folly.

Keywords
Attendance; Demand; Externalities; Football; Spectator sports; Superstars JEL codes: L39; L83; Z22

Notes
Accepted at Contemporary Economic Policy. Corresponding author: Dominik Schreyer (dominik.schreyer@whu.edu). Our research did not receive any specific funding from agencies in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors. We have no potential conflicts of interest to declare. Any errors are ours.

Journal
Contemporary Economic Policy

People

Dr Carl Singleton

Senior Lecturer in Economics, Economics