Attendance and the Uncertainty-of-Outcome Hypothesis in Baseball

Abstract

Attendance, Outcome uncertainty, Break point analysis, L83, C22,

Revenue Sharing and Competitive Balance in a Dynamic Contest Model

“…First, they assume a …xed supply of talent because the total amount of talent is exogenously given in their model. 2 Second, the speci…cation of the club's 1 See e.g., Lee and Fort (2008). 2 As Szymanski (2004) has shown, the assumption of …xed talent supply is often used to justify Walrasian …xed-supply instead of Contest-Nash conjectures.…”

Do Fans Want Their Team to be Competitive in the Short-Term (the Next Game) or the Long-Term (the Full Season), and Does the Answer Affect Management Decisions?

“…Similar to Lee and Fort's (2008) concept of playoff uncertainty, the hope definition of CB is based on the premise that ''proper competitive balance will not exist until every well-run club has a regularly recurring Hope of reaching postseason play'' (Levin et al, 2000, p. 5). Previous research supports that CB is characterized by the sum of sport consumers' feelings of hope that their team will make post-season play based on empirical results that suggest higher levels of aggregate hope in the league are associated with improved CB (O'Reilly et al, 2008).…”

“…Lee and Fort (2008) refer to these alternatives as game uncertainty and playoff uncertainty, respectively. In order to determine how to best market to these different types of sport consumers, we need to better understand the factors affecting their sensitivity to each of the UOH and hope constructs.…”

“…A series of studies have focused on how we conceptualize and measure inequality to maximize its relationship with sport consumer welfare and league revenues. Two perspectives have emerged over time; one the longstanding uncertainty of outcomes hypothesis (UOH), and the other a more recent hypothesis, one that suggests that the hope of postseason play drives fan interest (i.e., playoff uncertainty; Lee & Fort, 2008). While issues of definition and measurement remain somewhat unresolved, this research seeks to understand how we can leverage what we know about CB for sport marketing purposes.…”

Television Coverage and Outcome Uncertainty in Sports: Empirical Evidence from the NBA and WNBA. [Cobertura televisiva e incertidumbre en los resultados deportivos: Evidencia empírica en la NBA y la WNBA].

“…Closer games often lead to more timeouts and a greater likelihood of overtime, both of which create additional advertising value. We test conceptual models of the impact of television coverage on product quality, as proxied by game closeness (absolute score differential), for both the NBA and the Women's National Basketball Association (WNBA), wherein outcome uncertainty is the concept that consumer demand depends, at least in part, on the expected closeness of the athletic contest (Peel & Thomas, 1988;Lee & Fort, 2008). As a practical consideration, close games tend to be longer, with more timeouts and a higher probability of overtime, leading to more commercial breaks.…”