On the Edge of Your Seat: Demand for Football on Television and the Uncertainty of Outcome Hypothesis

Kevin Alavy, Alison Gaskell, Stephanie Leach () and Stefan Szymanski
Additional contact information
Kevin Alavy: Initiative Futures
Alison Gaskell: Initiative Futures
Stephanie Leach: Tanaka Business School, Imperial College

No 631, Working Papers from International Association of Sports Economists, North American Association of Sports Economists

Abstract: This paper examines the relationship between the demand for English football on television and outcome uncertainty. It tests the uncertainty of outcome hypothesis by using minute-by-minute television viewership figures which avoids the problems encountered when estimating demand using match attendance. We find that although uncertainty matters, it is the progression of the match which drives viewership and as a draw looks increasingly likely, viewers are likely to switch channels. Games that end in victories have a higher average viewership than games that end in stalemates.

Keywords: competitive balance; sports leagues; football; soccer; television (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: L82 L83 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 42 pages
Date: 2006-12
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-mic and nep-spo
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (13)

Downloads: (external link)
http://web.holycross.edu/RePEc/spe/Szymanski-etal_Initiative.pdf (application/pdf)
Our link check indicates that this URL is bad, the error code is: 404 Not Found (http://web.holycross.edu/RePEc/spe/Szymanski-etal_Initiative.pdf [302 Found]--> https://web.holycross.edu/RePEc/spe/Szymanski-etal_Initiative.pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: On the Edge of Your Seat: Demand for Football on Television and the Uncertainty of Outcome Hypothesis (2010)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spe:wpaper:0631

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers from International Association of Sports Economists Contact information at EDIRC., North American Association of Sports Economists Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Victor Matheson ().