The Peculiar Preferences of Sports Fans: Toward a Preference

The uncertainty of outcome hypothesis (UOH) informs economic models of fan attendance decisions, team revenue generation, and league outcomes. Despite this importance, little attention has been paid to the role of consumer preferences in motivating the UOH. We develop consumer choice models that generate predictions consistent with the UOH. These models contain utility functions with diminishing marginal utility in team success, or Leontief preferences for success, and assume that league decisions are based on maximization of aggregate welfare. The most general specification shows that when the population contains both partisan and nonpartisan fans, perfect uncertainty of outcome is optimal