Hometown Advantage

This spring a study was conducted to find if there exists a relationship between where one lives and their favorite sport to watch. The goal was to determine if the type of town one lives in has an effect on the type of sport they watch. Even if one does not play sports, they can still be a fan of sports and watch sports related television. If one is not a fan of playing or watching sports then they are still included in this study.

This study is not an accurate representation of the American population, but rather a relatively small sample from Kalamazoo College in Michigan. This is due to the limited resources obtained by the two Kalamazoo College students who conducted this research. 300 students from Kalamazoo College were randomly selected and sent via email an online survey of questions pertaining to lifestyle and level of sports interest. Such questions included information on hometown type, hours of sports television watched during the week and weekend, distance to nearest professional team arena, and number of events attended in a season.

Statistical results showed the researchers that there was no connection between hometown type and favorite sport watched. However, there were some significant findings. The varying distances one lived from an arena did not affect their event attendance. Results showed that those that lived 5 minutes away from the closest arena attended just as many events as those who lived 45 minutes away from the closest arena.