Micaela Jebitsch and Emily Schumacher
The Department of Finance and Economics is pleased to recognize two economics majors who shared the results of their research completed as part of the econometrics course sequence in economics at the 2025 Pennsylvania Sports Business Conference, “Inclusive Leadership in Sports.” This conference was held at the Hadley Union Building on the IUP main campus on Friday, April 11. The conference features presentations from various individuals involved across the sports industry.
Emily Schumacher (BA, Economics/Honors) and Micaela Jebitsch (BS, Mathematics and Economics/Honors dual degrees) were announced as the co-recipients of the 2025 Research Award at the Pennsylvania Sports Business Conference. According to its web page, the Pennsylvania Sports Business Conference Research Award recognizes students for “their contributions to furthering the industry through research” on the basis of the quality of the research and the relevance of the topic.
Their research paper, “NHL Attendance, Will You Be There?”, investigates the various drivers of attendance at National Hockey League games by examining an eclectic range of factors that influence fan participation. It contributes to existing literature by utilizing more seasons and more current data than previous samples. Gathering panel data consisting of the 30 NHL teams over a span of 12 seasons—from the 2007–08 season to the 2018–19 season—also yields better variability, allows for more dynamic adjustment, and controls for unobserved heterogeneity across teams. One-way Fixed Effects models are used to analyze two models, one including all 30 NHL teams and one including the 23 US NHL teams, to observe any differences based on country location. Results demonstrate that the most significant variables that impact attendance are winning percentage, change in winning percentage, a season during which fewer than the standard number of games were played, and income.
According to Schumacher, “We chose this topic because of our mutual interest in sports, specifically hockey, and the lack of attendance at a game we attended. This drove us to investigate the determinants of attendance at NHL games. Micaela and I had the wonderful opportunity to be able to participate in PSBC, as it allowed us to connect with other students who share the same interests in the sports business industry as well as interact with representatives who were able to take their passion for sports and make a career out of it. It was very inspiring to hear their stories and have the opportunity to present our research to such an engaged audience.”
Jebitsch went on to say, “ECON 356 and 456 have been two of the most informative and impactful courses I have taken at IUP, not to mention all of the friends I have made in the class as well. The freedom of topic choice allowed us to explore a different perspective of our personal interests by applying econometric analysis, as we learned that everything has an economic component! With an introduction to analytic tools such as Tableau and Eviews, I can confidently say this class has prepared me for my future career after graduating from IUP.”
Congratulations, Emily and Micaela!