Home Games and COVID-19

Before the 2019-2020 season cancelled all in person event due to the COVID-19 Pandemic, the Utah Jazz played 15 games at home from January 8th to March 9th. To limit the effects of COVID-19 on this analysis, all dates after March 14th will be dropped. This will limit the data set to each full week of the in person 2019-2020 season.

The mean travel productivity per hour for Downtown Salt Lake City is shown below faceted by travel mode.

Overall Car is the most productive method and shows the typical bi-modal distribution typical of commuting patterns, a peak in the morning and in the afternoon. Rail the next most productive method also shows this same peak. Bus and Walk/Bike do not show the peak and are more similar to weekend measures, increasing until mid day and then fading off towards the end of the day. The Delta Center, where the Utah Jazz play their homes games, ranks in the middle of the all the other downtown sub areas.

Game Days vs Non-Game Days

Comparing game days to non-game days it becomes apparent that across all modes there is more productivity in the evening across all of downtown Salt Lake City, with the Delta Center seeing the largest upswing.

Most of the home games began around 5-6 PM local time with games being around 2 hours, this data is from Basketball Reference. Weekend games appear to take place at similar times to weekday games, though there were some significantly later, 8:30 PM, and a few earlier, 3pm. Productivity results for weekend game days and weekday games are presented below.

Comparing the weekend game days to week end non-game days show how game days differ significantly from the norm.

With game days being significantly more productive than non-game days especially in the evening.

Finer Time Slices

Gameday vs Non-Game Day

### Gameday Weekend vs Weekday

General Weekend vs Weekday