Football Fans’ Emotions: Uncertainty Against Brand Perception

Abstract

Football is an industry driven by emotions. Fans experience many different emotions related to their teams. This paper aims to inspect how emotions impact attendance at football matches, examining whether football fans prefer to watch highly competitive matches or matches between good teams with star-players. The paper also considers behavioral and emotional differences of match spectators when brand-teams play away or at home. Importantly, we are also looking for the effects that the expectations of these emotions have on the tickets' price mechanism. We use data from three seasons of the Brazilian State championship with information on more than 1,100 matches. The OLS estimator with the moderation marginal effects allows for analysis of a brandteam playing with different levels of uncertainty over the outcomes measured by the relative level of the divisions of rivals. We look for the difference between the marginal contribution of the brand-team and the uncertainty of outcomes that might change under some conditions. The analysis is performed later using two subsamples and, finally, we address the problem of endogeneity in price using an instrumental variable. From our results, the main findings are: first, that the price of tickets does not much affect the demand when a brand-team is playing. In case of competitive matches between non-brand-teams, price behavior correlates to the rationality of the demand curve having a negative impact. The fact that price is not relevant for matches with the brand-team comes to corroborate the idea that fans are driven more by emotions than by economic reasoning; second, the phenomena of highly competitive matches does not work when a brand-team is playing against a small one; and third, the effect of a brand-team playing is relatively more important than the uncertainty of outcome. The last two findings mean that the satisfaction of watching star-players or big-teams is stronger than the emotion brought by a competitive match.

Social Dominance Orientation Boosts Collective Action Among Low-Status Groups

“…We found consistent full mediations in Study 1, and partial mediations and direct effects in Study 2, among members of lowstatus groups. It is possible that the results in Study 2 may have been influenced by the unique characteristics of football context, such as, the strong emotional commitment that football invokes (see Shakina et al, 2020); the impact of participating in ritual gatherings (e.g., matches), of the symbols representative of the group (e.g., flags), and emotional entrainment, on identification and commitment with the group (Von Scheve et al, 2014). It may also have been influenced by other variables not included or controlled in the study, such as, the degree/intensity of rivalry between groups (being extremely intense between football teams, more than between Universities) that shape identities, attitudes and behaviors (e.g., Benkwitz and Molnar, 2012); degree of fan loyalty which reflects a persistent attitude resistant to change, and creates biases in cognitive processing and provides a guide to behavior (Funk and James, 2001); fanographics (i.e., variables that measure fans' relationship with the sport or club; e.g., time dedicated to the team; de Carvalho et al, 2015).…”

The Impact of Cheering on Sports Performance: Comparison of Serie A Statistics Before and During COVID-19

“…We emphasize that the discrepancies mentioned above may depend on the approach adopted to carry out the analysis and the contexts examined. Specifically, (i) the amateur sport could differ substantially from the professional sport when the ability of athletes to respond to external stimuli is concerned [ 13 - 15 ]; (ii) fans' reactions could depend on the sport, season, and even the match or event in question [ 16 ]; (iii) the economic condition of the clubs could affect the performance of athletes [ 17 ]; (iv) supporters can often express disappointment during a match or sporting performance [ 2 ]; and (v) other psychological, social, and cultural variables could unpredictably alter sports performance [ 18 - 20 ]. Since the enormous damage caused by COVID-19 from a psychological point of view falls into the latter category of bias [ 21 , 22 ], it is necessary to interpret all the evidence found with caution.…”

How We Can Enhance Spectator Attendance for the Sustainable Development of Sport in the Era of Uncertainty: A Re-Examination of Competitive Balance

“…They reported that attendance would be maximized when the ex-ante probability of the home team winning is twice (66%) the chance of the visiting team to win the game, implying an inverted U-shaped curvilinear relationship. Conversely, Shakina et al (2020) reported the U-shape effect of the uncertainty of sport outcomes on attendance [49]. Greater attendance is expected at low and high levels of uncertainty than at the middle level of uncertainty.…”

“…However, over the years, the UOH stating that spectators prefer games with uncertain outcomes has been debated under various conditions [34,46]. The UOH has been challenged by alternative specifications such as the effects of the home team's strength [46,47] and absolute team strength [48,49] on live attendance. Shakina et al (2020) tested the UOH against the brand-team effect and found that fans prefer to watch good team play (including star players or brand teams) rather than highly competitive matches [49].…”