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Attendance and the Uncertainty-of-Outcome Hypothesis in Baseball

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Abstract

Sports offer interesting insights into demand due to the added twist of fan preferences for outcome uncertainty. We add to and amend previous work by analyzing the time series behavior of Major League Baseball attendance (1901–2003) using break point analysis, exploring a wide variety of measures of game uncertainty, playoff uncertainty, and consecutive season uncertainty. Only playoff uncertainty is statistically significant, and it is economically significant only for (1) truly ambitious intervention and (2) recent history. The policy implication is that actual league choices may be motivated by wealth redistribution rather than concerns over competitive balance.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Economics, Sogang University, Sinsoo-dong #1, Mapo-gu, Seoul, 121-742, Korea

    Young Hoon Lee

  2. Program in Sport Management, Division of Kinesiology, University of Michigan, 1402 Washington Heights, Rm. 3150, Ann Arbor, MI, 48109-2013, USA

    Rodney Fort

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  1. Young Hoon Lee
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  2. Rodney Fort
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Correspondence to Rodney Fort.

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Lee, Y.H., Fort, R. Attendance and the Uncertainty-of-Outcome Hypothesis in Baseball. Rev Ind Organ 33, 281–295 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11151-008-9193-9

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11151-008-9193-9

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