Football Fans' Emotions: Uncertainty Against Brand Perception

Area of Science:

• Sports Economics
• Consumer Behavior
• Sociology of Sport

Background:

• Football (soccer) is a significant industry where fan emotions heavily influence attendance and purchasing decisions.
• Understanding the interplay between emotional drivers, match characteristics, and economic factors is crucial for sports marketing and management.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate how fan emotions impact attendance at football matches.
• To determine if fans prefer highly competitive matches or games featuring star players and well-known teams (brand-teams).
• To analyze the effect of team status (brand-team vs. non-brand-team) and match competitiveness on ticket pricing and demand, considering home and away dynamics.

Main Methods:

• Utilized data from three seasons of the Brazilian State championship, encompassing over 1,100 matches.
• Employed Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) estimation with moderation marginal effects to analyze brand-team performance under varying outcome uncertainty.
• Addressed endogeneity in ticket pricing using an instrumental variable approach and analyzed subsamples for robust findings.

Main Results:

• Ticket prices have minimal impact on demand when a brand-team plays; demand is less price-sensitive.
• For non-brand-teams, price negatively correlates with demand, aligning with traditional economic principles.
• Highly competitive matches do not significantly drive attendance when a brand-team plays a weaker opponent.
• The presence of a brand-team and star players is a stronger determinant of fan interest than match uncertainty or competitiveness.

Conclusions:

• Fan attendance and ticket purchasing decisions in football are predominantly driven by emotional factors rather than purely economic rationality.
• The appeal of watching star players and established brand-teams outweighs the excitement of a potentially competitive match, especially when a popular team is involved.
• These findings suggest that sports marketers should leverage the emotional connection fans have with brand-teams and star players in their strategies.