Consuming Contests: Outcome Uncertainty and Spectator Demand for Contest-based Entertainment

Ferguson, Patrick J.; Lakhani, Karim R.

doi:10.2139/ssrn.3783339

Cited by 5 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 68 publications

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“…In contrast, if the league fails to implement a salary cap or other mechanisms to maintain competitive balance, fans may soon lose interest in watching games due to the elimination of outcome uncertainty [2]. The similar finding is revealed by Lakhani and Ferguson, one standard deviation decrease in the outcome uncertainty of a game would result in an 11.2% decrease in attendance [3].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 61%

Can Higher Salary Cap Bring the Team a Trophy? -The Correlation Between Player Salary Expense and Teams Ranking

Zeng,

Wu,

et al. 2023

AEMPS

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This paper investigates the impact of a team's salary cap on its end-of-season standing. This study made use of data from the Spanish Soccer League (La Liga) and the National Football League (NFL). Four consecutive seasons of correlation and regression analyses were conducted for both leagues to determine the relationship between these two variables. The analysis revealed that in La Liga, a higher salary cap will result in a higher team ranking. However, no correlation between salary caps and NFL team rankings has been found. The root cause for the inconsistent results may be that the disparity in salary cap between NFL teams is insufficient to have an actual impact on team performance. This research is valuable in informing the club manager whether accumulating expensive players to buy the trophy is a feasible strategy.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 61%

Can Higher Salary Cap Bring the Team a Trophy? -The Correlation Between Player Salary Expense and Teams Ranking

Zeng,

Wu,

et al. 2023

AEMPS

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“…However, there is an equity trade-off to consider. Whilst a DP may improve team quality, if this results in a one-sided contest, it may detract fan interest and actually reduce attendance (Ferguson & Lakhani, 2021; Schreyer & Torgler, 2018).…”

Section: Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Designated Player Policy Rule and Attendance Demand in Major League Soccer

Rewilak

2022

Journal of Sports Economics

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Evidence suggests that Major League Soccer's designated player (DP) rule increased match-day attendance in its inaugural season leading to expansion of this policy. However, there is a need to examine whether these findings are robust. Therefore, this paper uses the DP rule as a natural experiment to identify its effect on match-day attendance using a difference-in-difference estimation strategy. In contrast to existing research, when using a difference-in-difference estimator, the statistically significant effect of DPs on attendance vanishes but may be recovered when omitting domestic DPs from the set of DPs.

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“…We next reasoned that sports fans have limited time and likely do not watch every game or part of every game. Instead, in order to maximize their experience of surprise 83 , which acts as a reward in itself in low-stakes contexts like sports games 7,62,[84][85][86][87][88] , they may prioritize their fandom by watching select games or parts of games. If this were the case, a null distribution of plays that is more representative of the plays actually experienced by subjects would be those from the games the subjects reported, or even just plays from the 4 th (final) quarter of those games.…”

Section: Momentary Surprise Drove Memory For Positive and Negative Playsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The prevailing focus in these studies is how surprise affects learning and memory for momentary events on the scale of seconds; however, it is clear that humans can predict outcomes well beyond the upcoming moment 48 . A very non-exhaustive list of things we can make predictions about beyond the next event include a series of upcoming stimuli 49, 50 , the linguistic content of not just upcoming words 51–53 but paragraphs 54, 55 , attributes about oneself months and years into the future 56–59 , political elections months and years into the future 60 , and the winners of upcoming sports games 61, 62 and championships 63 . Given that we commonly make long-term predictions and that surprise drives memory, it is worth asking whether longterm predictions resulting in errors (long-term surprises) also drive memory.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Long-term, multi-event surprise enhances autobiographical memory

Antony

Barnett

Bennion

2022

Preprint

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Neurobiological models of learning emphasize the importance of prediction errors (surprises) for memory formation. These effects have focused on memory for information surrounding a momentary surprising event; however, it is less clear whether surprise that unfolds across multiple events and timescales impacts memory. We asked basketball fans about their most positive and negative autobiographical memories of individual plays, games, and seasons, allowing surprise measurements spanning seconds, hours, and months. We used advanced analytics on National Basketball Association play-by-play data and betting odds spanning 17 seasons, >22K games, >5.6M plays to compute and align the estimated surprise values of each memory. We found that surprising events biased positive memories on the scale of seconds and months and negative memories across all three timescales. Critically, game and season memories could not be explained by surprise at shorter timescales, suggesting that long-term, multi-event surprise influences memory. These results expand the role of surprise in models of learning and reinforce its relevance in real-world domains.

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Consuming Contests: Outcome Uncertainty and Spectator Demand for Contest-based Entertainment

Cited by 5 publications

References 68 publications

Can Higher Salary Cap Bring the Team a Trophy? -The Correlation Between Player Salary Expense and Teams Ranking

Can Higher Salary Cap Bring the Team a Trophy? -The Correlation Between Player Salary Expense and Teams Ranking

The Designated Player Policy Rule and Attendance Demand in Major League Soccer

Long-term, multi-event surprise enhances autobiographical memory

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