Malaysian ethnic groups and the culture of football fans attendance during EPL clubs friendly matches in Malaysia

The involvement of Malaysian and the football fans in the English Premier League is real. Malaysia Airlines System (MAS) and Air Asia are the pure examples which involving in sponsoring EPL teams such as Manchester United, Liverpool and others. For the session year 2011-2012, they have moved another step further, where Malaysian not only sponsors the EPL team but they are the new owner of Queen Park Ranger and Cardiff City Club. Football is a team sport which is the most played and watched in the world, whether we actively participate as a player or simply attend as a fan or spectator. The popularity of football has increased especially in the 20th century. Recently, football is a lucrative industry through the authority of media broadcast income and ticket sales at stadiums. Millions of fans usually go to the football stadium to follow their favourite teams, while billions are watch football game on television. Malaysia's key issue is there are no consistencies in sport fans attendance which conducted in Malaysia. So, are better understandings of the culture of football attendance can increase fans attendance? And are the background of the fans can be part of influencing the attendance of fans to football friendly matches in Malaysia? The purpose of this study is to identify the culture of football fans attendance on English Premier League in Malaysia and to support for using the theory of planned behavior for selection of factors in conducting research regarding why people attend to watch EPL clubs in Malaysia. This study is a descriptive research, and the instrument that has been use is questionnaire which was adapted from Ketra L. Armstrong (2008). The sample size of this study is (n=815), and the participants of this research is from EPL sport fans club in Malaysia. The data was analyzed by using one-way ANOVA, and multiple regressions. Multiple regression shows that event attractiveness factor by getting experience of feeling while attending the match (β=.259) can increase the attendance of football fans. Simultaneously, event accessibility factor the researcher found that if the match held on appropriate day (β=.127) has influence to EPL fans attendance, although in this research the result shows that when the time and when the match will be held cannot influence them (β=.122) (β=.124). While event culture, when the organizer of the match provide a special giveaways and get the special merchandise from the match (β=.097) (β=.090) show significant on the attendance of sport fans. The results have the ability to provide much needed findings for event tournament, sponsors, and event organizer as they continue to develop methods to increase fans attendance.