The Effect of Expected Outcome on Attendance

Sammanfattning: Live attendance at sports events is important for individual teams as well as for the broader community of a sport. The amount of uncertainty about the outcome of a game is considered a crucial determinant of game attendance. This study examines how fans’ expectation about game outcome affects game attendance in Swedish Allsvenskan. The empirical analysis is guided by a behavioural model of the decision to attend sports events. Using a fixed effects estimator, we find that fans show a preference for games with little uncertainty. This can be explained by reference-dependent preferences and loss aversion.