Something for nothing: The free ticket myth

Despite a wealth of academic literature on sports marketing, scant regard appears to have been paid to an almost inevitable element of the event promotion mix – the distribution of free tickets. The few references tend to be dismissive of it as an old-fashioned, short-term solution to the problem of maximizing stadium attendance for profit. Far greater attention is paid to more sophisticated and exotic promotional tools. Yet the practice of free ticket distribution stubbornly refuses to die out; which begs the question: If benefit remains, how can we maximize it? To answer this, discourse from two distinct marketing sub-disciplines – the study of sports attendance motivation and retail sampling – is drawn together. These conclusions are illustrated in the context of a conservatively conducted field study, demonstrating that the proper application of this new theory does in fact increase attendance and drive profit.