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Although deeply ingrained in the economics of professional team sports literature, previous research could not confirm the importance of outcome uncertainty in European professional football. Moreover, a negative effect was detected and explained rather controversially: It is argued that the majority of spectators prefer to see the home team play either a much inferior team or a rather successful team. With data of n = 306 matches in the German Bundesliga, a generalized Tobit estimator with individual cut-off points and error terms clustered by home teams is employed to follow up with the discussion on the (un)importance of outcome uncertainty. The results highlight a significant positive effect on attendance when either the home and/or the away team still has a theoretical chance to win the championship while the suggested importance of teams still having the possibility to qualify for the UEFA Champions League is not supported (medium-term uncertainty). Furthermore, in line with previous research we could detect a negative effect of short-term uncertainty. However, while there is no evidence that spectators prefer the home team to play an inferior team, the results suggest that it is rather a strong brand of the away team that rises attendance figures in the German Bundesliga.
Pawlowski et al. (Fri,) studied this question.