Can you advise how to answer this?

2019 Toronto Blue Jays Attendance

Like it or not, professional sport is business, and a significant portion of a professional sports franchise's revenues are home game attendance, with all the revenues remaining with the home or host team. Strongly related to that are the concession sales or food, beverages, and memorabilia to the fans that attend the games.

The Toronto Blue Jays are located in the fifth largest sports market in North America, yet they only managed to draw just over 1.75 million fans, 21^st out of 30 teams in the league. The Blue Jays were near the bottom of the league in percentage of seats sold, with less than 45% of the available seats sold. By contrast, in the few years following the opening of the Skydome, now Rogers Centre, the Blue Jays drew over 4 million fans several years in a row.

The owner of the Toronto Blue Jays is Rogers Communications, a publicly traded company and also owner of the Rogers Centre. Therefore, it is in the shareholder's best interests to improve attendance. To put this into context, if the average seat represents $75 in revenue, an extra 1,000,000 fans or tickets sold, translates to $75 million additional revenue. (Rogers is also a broadcasting company, so they also earn significant revenues from the radio and television broadcasts of the Blue Jays games.)

You are advising Mark Shapiro, President of the Blue Jays, with respect to the factors that influence attendance at the games. Past studies comparing the 30 teams in Major League Baseball have shown that team success is positively correlated to overall attendance; fans want to see their home team win. In studying game-to-game variation in attendance, it is not clear whether the significant factor is

• the team's overall record, as measured in games above or below 0.500 (500) or,
• the team's proximity to a playoff position, as measured in the games ahead or behind (GB, for Games Below, so negative values mean being in first place), or
• the game's leverage, cLI, a measure created to assess the relative importance of a game in terms of the impact the team's likelihood of winning the championship; a game of average impact is 1, while games of great impact have values above 1, while at the other extreme a team that had been eliminated from playoff contention has a cLI of 0

Scheduling is known to have some effect, as weekend games tend to be better attended than weekday games. Other scheduling factors include competing against Toronto's favourite sport, hockey (The Toronto Maple Leafs' season ended April 23, the playoffs ended June 12), playing on statutory holidays, and playing afternoon games on weekdays, when many people of working. Additionally, when the Blue Jays play their divisional opponents, the New York Yankees and the Boston Red Sox, fan interest is greater and historically, attendance has been high, aided by a significant number of Boston and New York fans coming to watch their teams play in Toronto.

In 2019, there were three player debuts that could have possibly impacted attendance. All three were sons of very successful baseball players, so the expectation for this trio have been high and their arrival had been anticipated for some time:

• Vladimir Guerrero, Jr., son of second-ballot Hall of Famer Vladimir Guerrero; debut April 26
• Cavan Biggio, son of third-ballot Hall of Famer Craig Biggio; debut May 24
• Bo Bichette, son of 4-time All Star, Dante Bichette, debut July 29 - an "away" game.

In the file MSTM5060 F2020 BlueJays.xls you are provided with the following data in the columns, in the following order:

Gm# - Game # - for sorting purposes only

Date - Date - for reference only

Attendance - Attendance

D/N - D - indicates a daytime game; N - indicates an evening (night) game

OPP - Opponent Division rivals are NYY, BOS, BAL, and TBR.

Mo - If the day of the week is a Monday

Tu - If the day of the week is a Tuesday

We - If the day of the week is a Wednesday

Th - If the day of the week is a Thursday

Fr - If the day of the week is a Friday

Sa - If the day of the week is a Saturday

Su - If the day of the week is a Sunday

Hol - If the game is played on a Statutory Holiday

500 - record as games above or below 0.500

Rank - Position within the division out of 5

GB - Games ahead (+) or Behind (-) for first place

cLI - Championship Leverage Index, explained in the text, above

Note: When the description of the data begins "If..." then the column has the value of "1" if true and zero or blank otherwise.

We have deliberately NOT included data on game-day promotions. Your task is to develop a model that will assist the Blue Jays management with respect to factors that significantly influence attendance, excluding the team's promotional activities.

35 DAY games, 46 Night Games