Outcome Uncertainty and the Couch Potato Audience

Abstract

Previous studies of attendance demand for professional team sports have failed to yield clear-cut findings on the importance of outcome uncertainty to consumers. But potentially fewer problems should arise in examining the link between outcome uncertainty and demand in the television market for team sports, which of the case of English Premier League football is in fact a more important component in total club revenue. This study models both the choice of which games to show and the size of audience attracted by each game, exploiting data on audience sizes for games between 1993 and 2002. We propose a new measure of match outcome uncertainty and, from our results, both the broadcaster and the audience appear interested in competitive balance. Copyright (c) Scottish Economic Society 2005.

Stadium attendance and television audience demand in English league football

“…They find that the number of star players involved in the match had a significant influence on the ratings for different categories of broadcast, such as national over-the-air, national cable, local over-the-air and local cable. Other studies which have examined television audience demand are Kanazawa and Funk's (2001) study of basketball in the NBA and the study by Forrest et al (2005) of the FAPL.…”

“…However, the empirical evidence in the literature is mixed (Borland and McDonald, 2003;Szymanski, 2003). This paper adopts a measure used by Forrest et al (2005), which uses information derived from teams' league standings. UNCERTAINTY is the absolute value of: home advantage þ home team's points per game À away team's points per game;…”

“…It is also important to note that given the costs are identical for both sets of supporters, television fans of the away team could outnumber those of the home team. To capture team form, a similar approach to that of Forrest et al (2005) is adopted in which the performances of the teams are distinguished with respect to their league standings. PROM, MID and REL are used to denote the current league standings of the teams prior to the match.…”

Économie du sport professionnel et équilibre compétitif. Les limites d’une approche largement utilisée : « Noll-Scully measure of Competitive Balance »

“…1157Szymanski (pp. -1158 (Dosseville, 2007) et a été intégré récemment par des éco-nomistes du sport (Forrest, Simmons & Buraimo, 2005 ;Forrest & Simmons, 2006 ;Baranzini, Ramirez & Weber, 2008). Dans son état de la littérature, Szymanski relève que, depuis 1988, les études relatives à l'incertitude sur le dénouement des matchs se sont largement appuyées sur les cotes des équipes (fixing) dans le cadre des jeux de paris (Forrest & Simmons, 2002 ;Knowles, Sherony & Haupert, 1992 ;Kuypers, 1996 ;Peel & Thomas, 1988, 1997Rascher, 1999).…”

Evaluating Broadcast Strategy within Australian Football

“…Earlier work by Hammervold and Solberg (2006), found there was a clubs would lose the fewest gate receipts ticket, therefore generating the largest gain from the broadcast rights paid by the subscription provider BSkyB. Another study by Forrest et al (2005), into the impact of match outcome uncertainty on broadcast demand for EPL, found that the three of the biggest EPL clubs (Liverpool, Arsenal and Manchester United) drew larger broadcast ratings, over and above the other control variables such as day of the week and time of kick-off. This finding suggested that broadcasting revenues could be maximised when broadcasters are able to choose matches without contract related game selection constraints.…”