The Role of Uncertainty of Outcome and Scoring in the Determination of Fan Satisfaction in the NFL

Abstract

Fan satisfaction with individual sports games is likely to be an important indicator of future sales of tickets, television and radio advertising, and team merchandise sales. For the 2009-2010 National Football League (NFL) season, NFL.com, the official website of the NFL, had fans enter a ‘‘fan rating’’ for each game of the season. This rating was on a scale of 0—100 with 100 being the most memorable. Using these figures, the authors test the economic hypotheses of the importance of uncertainty of outcome during the game and overall points scored by both teams in the game. As expected, the margin of victory in the game was shown to have a negative and significant effect on the fan rating, implying that fans enjoy uncertainty of outcome as the game is played. In addition, higher scoring games led to higher fan ratings than lower scoring games, implying fan preference for scoring.

Keywords

uncertainty of outcome scoring NFL football fan interest

Get full access to this article

View all access options for this article.

References

Buraimo, B. , Forrest, D. , & Simmons, R. ( 2006). Outcome uncertainty measures: How closely do they predict a close game? In J. Albert , & R. Koning (Eds.), Statistical thinking in sports (pp. 167-178). Boca Raton, FL: Chapman & Hall.

Forrest, D. , & Simmons, R. ( 2002). Outcome uncertainty and attendance demand in sport: The case of English soccer. The Statistician, 51, 229-241.

Fort, R. ( 2003). Thinking (some more) about competitive balance. Journal of Sports Economics, 4, 280-283.

Knowles, G. , Sherony, K. , & Haupert, M. ( 1992). The demand for major league baseball: A test of the uncertainty of outcome hypothesis. American Economist, 36, 72-80.

Lucifora, C. , & Simmons, R. ( 2003). Superstar effects in sport: Evidence from Italian soccer . Journal of Sports Economics, 4, 35-55.

Owen, P. , & Weatherston, C. (2004). Uncertainty of outcome and super 12 rugby union attendance: Application of a general-to-specific modeling strategy. Journal of Sports Economics, 5, 347-370.

Paul, R. , & Weinbach, A. ( 2007). The uncertainty of outcome and scoring effects on Nielsen Ratings for Monday night football. Journal of Economics and Business, 59, 199-211.

Paul, R. , Weinbach, A. , Borghesi, R. , & Wilson, M. ( 2009). Using betting market odds to measure the uncertainty of outcome in major league baseball. International Journal of Sport Finance, 4, 255-263.

Peel, D.A. , & Thomas, D.A. ( 1988). Outcome uncertainty and the demand for football. Scottish Journal of Political Economy, 35, 242-249.

10.

Peel, D.A. , & Thomas, D.A. ( 1992). The demand for football: Some evidence on outcome uncertainty . Empirical Economics, 17, 323-331.

11.

Rascher, D. ( 1999). A test of the optimal positive production network externality in major league baseball. In J. Fizel , E. Gustafson , & L. Hadley (Eds.), Sports economics: Current research (pp. 27-48). Westport, CT: Praeger .

12.

Sanderson, A.R. , & Siegfried, J.J. (2003). Thinking about competitive balance. Journal of Sports Economics, 4, 255-279.