Just looking for a good game: competitive balance in the Korean Professional Baseball League

Young Hoon Lee, Hayley Jang and Rodney Fort

Applied Economics, 2016, vol. 48, issue 33, 3104-3115

Abstract: Rottenberg’s uncertainty of outcome hypothesis is about preferences that can vary across fans and sports. We provide the first evidence of the empirical power of the hypothesis in the Korean Professional Baseball League (KPBL). In a panel data set, team-level aggregation over years shows that fans of this league attend in ways consistent with the hypothesis at the level of game uncertainty and consecutive season uncertainty, but only the first is statistically significant. KPBL fans appear to just be looking for a good game. This is consistent with the nearly complete concentration of post-season participation among a very few teams outside of the major population centre in Seoul and a lack of local team identification among KPBL fans. Our work adds to the diversity of league structures in the competitive balance literature since talent levels in KPBL are the result of parent company advertising choices rather than geographic identification. There are research questions and a policy implication.

Date: 2016
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DOI: 10.1080/00036846.2015.1136393

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