Abstract
This study seeks to find factors that determine the mobilization of spectators in games of the Korean professional baseball league for sustainable development. In particular, it re-examines the uncertainty-of-outcome hypothesis by looking at the effect of competitive balance (CB) on seat occupancy in stadiums. Data for 2160 games over three years (2015–2017) from the archives of the Korea Baseball Organization (KBO) were analyzed. The results show that the CB of the home team, with the entire teams, affects seat occupancy rate (SOR). It is also shown that there exists an inverted U-shaped curvilinear relationship between CB and SOR. However, the winning percentage of the home team in the entire league had a significant impact on the SOR. This implies that the overall athletic performance of the home team in the league competing with all other teams is much more important than the home team’s competitive balance in the season played before the game, for attracting fans to the stadium.
Highlights
Professional sports are a cultural phenomenon that has been deeply embedded in the daily life of people [1]
The objective of this paper is to investigate the effect of competitive balance (CB) on the seat occupancy rate (SOR)
The winning percentage (WP) of the home team in the season played before the match (HWP_T) was found to be statistically significant (β = 0.23, p < 0.001), but the WP of the home team against the visiting team (HWP) was not (β = 0.01, p = 0.420, n.s.)
Summary
Professional sports are a cultural phenomenon that has been deeply embedded in the daily life of people [1]. They have played an essential role in integrating the urban community, culturally and socially. Sport events have contributed to feelings of national identity, social cohesion and community empowerment, and promoted sustainable development [2,3]. Sport plays a role of achieving the sustainable development goals [4]. Growth of attendance is essential to the subsistence and sustainable development of the teams since it is closely related to income from season tickets, telecasts, sponsorship, sales of licensed items, sales in on-site shops in stadiums, etc. It is critical to the competitiveness of the sports industry as a whole, as well as that of individual teams [9,10]
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