Institute of Sports Science

Willingness-to-Pay for suspense in sports

16.06.2015 – The economics literature related to the uncertainty of outcome hypothesis reopens the discussion of whether the fans’ perceptions of competitive balance (CB) are in line with Rottenberg’s and Neale’s theory.

This article contributes to the literature by analyzing the effect of fans’ perceptions of suspensefulness on their willingness-to-pay for a single-game ticket and evaluating monetarily the (un)importance of CB. Results suggest that fans’ notions of competitiveness influence their spending behavior, rising as perceived balance rises, at least up to high levels of competitiveness.

The article is a joint work by Georgios Nalbantis and Tim Pawlowski (both University of Tuebingen) as well as Dennis Coates (University of Maryland Baltimore County) and was recently published in the Journal of Sports Economics.