Do Fans Care about Compliance to Doping Regulations in Sports? The Impact of PED Suspension in Baseball

Pascal Courty and Jeffrey Cisyk

No 1407, Department Discussion Papers from Department of Economics, University of Victoria

Abstract: There is little evidence in support of the main economic rationale for regulating athletic doping: that doping reduces fan interest. The introduction of random testing for performance-enhancing drugs (PED) by Major League Baseball (MLB) offers unique data to investigate the issue. The announcement of a PED violation: (a) initially reduces home-game attendance by 8 percent, (b) has no impact on home-game attendance after 15 days, and (c) has a small negative impact on the game attendance for other MLB teams. This is the first systematic evidence that doping decreases consumer demand for sporting events.

Keywords: Performance Enhancing Drug; Doping; Baseball; Major Baseball League; Attendance (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D01 L83 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 27 pages
Date: 2014-12-02
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-law and nep-spo
Note: ISSN 1914-2838
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https://www.uvic.ca/socialsciences/economics/_assets/docs/discussion/ddp1407.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Do Fans Care About Compliance to Doping Regulations in Sports? The Impact of PED Suspension in Baseball (2017)
Working Paper: Do Fans Care about Compliance to Doping Regulations in Sports? The Impact of PED Suspension in Baseball (2015)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:vic:vicddp:1407

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