Forecasting the consumption of professional baseball in Chinese Taipei-new evidence from structural time series model

The purpose of this paper applied the structure time series model to forecast the consumption of professional baseball in Taiwan by using yearly data from 1990 to 2010. The primary advantage of this model is not only taking into account trends, seasonal factors and cycle effect but also that reflects the realistic situation of the consumption of professional baseball, therefore, to bring about more accurate short-term forecasting. Based on estimated results, it was amazing for us that game attendance didn´t be affected by GDP. And the impact of game-fixing scandal occurred in 1997 is harmful to game attendance, so the Chinese professional baseball league faced a subsequent attendance slump. Furthermore, in accordance with the model forecasting results, a directional path was precise forecast from 2009 to 2010 period belonging to in-sample forecast. Finally, we gain out-of-sample forecasts that attendance is increasing directionally in the future five years. This important information can provide investors and owners with the best investment choice in the future.