National Pasttime: The Minor Leagues and why fans are filling the bleachers

The purpose of this study was to identify the factors that determine why fans attend Minor League Baseball games. The factors were broken down into four categories which were customer services, promotions, entertainment, attractions. Additional information and demographics were also examined. A survey comprising of 32 questions was distributed at the last weekend home series of the Tennessee Smokies. The Tennessee Smokies are the Double A affiliate of the St. Louis Cardinals. Four hundred seventy surveys were distributed. Research participants consisted men and women who are 18 years and older that paid for a Tennessee Smokies Baseball game ticket. Each participant had an equal opportunity to voluntarily fill out a survey. The survey took approximately 10 minutes to complete and then was collected to be part of the research. A response rate of 87% (407) was obtained. A Majority of the surveys were completed, while those surveys with blank answers were added and calculated as part of the research. Frequency tables were created based on the means, standard deviation, minimum, and maximum results for the responses on questions 1 through 20. Questions 1 through 20 consisted of five questions from the customer services, promotions, entertainment, and attractions section. All were based on a rating scale of 1 to 7, with 1 being extremely unimportant and 7 being extremely important. The ranking of each category by the highest mean revealed that attractions had the highest mean at 5.95 followed by promotions at 5.52, entertainment at 5.43, and customer services at 4.90. Then each category was examined based on the lowest and highest means. In the attractions category the highest response was the appeal of the stadium (6.30) followed by the appeal of being outside (6.00). The attractions category did not have a response lower than 5.82 which was the time of day the game is held. The second highest category as to why fans attend games was promotions. The highest response was free give-aways at the gate (5.71), followed by ticket promotions (5.63). The lowest response was sponsorship promotions at 5.20. Entertainment, the third category, has a mean of 6.02 being the quality of play by the Smokies. Next was the appeal of a player (Major Leaguer) at 5.54. The lowest response was the activities for children at 4.91. The last category based on the means of all five questions was customer services. The highest response was parking availability and price at 5.75, followed by the speed of the food services at 5.38. The lowest response was the ability to purchase a beer at 3.00. The results, it revealed that fans think that the ability to purchase beer at games is an unimportant reason to attend with the lowest mean of all 20 questions. No other response to the questions were on the low end of the scale. Majority of the responses were five and above. The responses that had the highest importance to fans were the appeal of the stadium at 6.30, quality of play by the Smokies at 6.02, appeal of being outside at 6.00, day of the week the game is held and location of the stadium were both at 5.84. The highest response regarding the category of promotions was seventh out of 20 and that was free give-aways at the gate (5.71). The attractions category which had the highest mean, had all five questions in the top ten. After the means were established, MANOVA test were conducted to examine the significance of each of the four categories. A significance level was found between all four of the categories. The results are F(3, 449)=98.772, p ≤ .000. Then a repeated measure ANOVA test were conducted to determine if he means differ from one another. To determine how the means differ, pairwise comparisons were run with a Bonferroni adjustment on the p value. All means differ from one another except promotions and entertainment. These two categories were equal to each other. Therefore customer services is significantly the lowest, attractions is the highest and promotions and entertainment are in the middle. The last part of the surveys was based on additional information about Smokies Baseball and demographics ranging from gender, age, and zip code to type of ticket purchased, number of times at Smokies Park since the stadium opened in 2000 and the 2003 season, and the main source of information about the Smokies. These questions consisted of fill in the blanks, multiple choice, and yes or no answers. Results revealed that the average age of adults at Tennessee Smokies games is 42, with a maximum age of 80. When fans attend a Smokies game, 61.7% respond that they come with their spouse or significant other. Followed by attending the game with children at 32.6%. The 407 fans that filled out the survey revealed that 27.0% drive from Knox County to enjoy the game at Smokies Park. Other counties with representation are Sevier County (9.5%), Hamblen County (9.2%), Blount County (7.2%), and Greene County (5.8%). States with the highest percentage are Georgia at 3.0% and Alabama at 2.3%. When fans decide to attend a game, 38.8% found the time and date in the newspaper. The Internet was next at 18.7% and then radio at 17.7%. The demographics and additional information about Smokies Baseball helped to establish a baseline of information