How outcome uncertainty, loss aversion and team quality affect stadium attendance in Dutch professional football

We investigate stadium attendance in the highest level of Dutch professional football for the seasons 2000/01 – 2015/16 focusing on outcome uncertainty, loss aversion and team quality. We find that for individual football matches, attendance is related to reference-dependent preferences with loss aversion dominating the preference for uncertain outcomes. Furthermore, team quality is an important determinant of stadium attendance. Towards the end of the season, outcome uncertainty regarding the final ranking becomes important. For this seasonal uncertainty, we find a positive and stable, but ra... Mehr ...

Verfasser: Besters, Lucas
van Ours, Jan C.
van Tuijl, Martin A.
Dokumenttyp: doc-type:workingPaper
Erscheinungsdatum: 2018
Verlag/Hrsg.: Amsterdam and Rotterdam: Tinbergen Institute
Schlagwörter: ddc:330 / Z20 / L83 / D12 / Stadium attendance / Professional football / Outcome uncertainty / Loss aversion / Play-offs
Sprache: Englisch
Permalink: https://search.fid-benelux.de/Record/base-29049075
Datenquelle: BASE; Originalkatalog
Powered By: BASE
Link(s) : http://hdl.handle.net/10419/185601

We investigate stadium attendance in the highest level of Dutch professional football for the seasons 2000/01 – 2015/16 focusing on outcome uncertainty, loss aversion and team quality. We find that for individual football matches, attendance is related to reference-dependent preferences with loss aversion dominating the preference for uncertain outcomes. Furthermore, team quality is an important determinant of stadium attendance. Towards the end of the season, outcome uncertainty regarding the final ranking becomes important. For this seasonal uncertainty, we find a positive and stable, but rather small impact of the introduction of a unique and large end-of-season play-off scheme for the qualification for European football.