Predictive Modelling of Sports Facility Use: A Model of Aquatic Centre Attendance

The level of attendance appears to be the central indicator for analysing the performance of public sports facilities. However, most of the studies focus on customer satisfaction and loyalty and have been carried out in Australia and the United Kingdom. The aim of this article was, therefore, to identify potential explanatory variables that could explain attendance at leisure sports facilities in Europe based on the literature (a). Then, we aimed to identify the variables that explained attendance based on a study of aquatic centres (b) to propose an exploratory predictive model (c). The sample was composed of data from 28 aquatic facilities over 5 years, and we examined 41 variables from the literature. A predictive model of attendance was created using backward regression. The proposed formula had a predictive power of 79.13% of the observed attendance in our sample of aquatic centres. These results suggest that it is possible to determine attendance at an aquatic facility with only four variables and that the study of leisure facilities in Europe implies adapting the variables to be considered. This is also the first model to investigate leisure sports facilities in Europe.