Winning at any cost?.

Generally economists have argued that attendances at sports events will be higher the greater is the degree of uncertainty about the result. This is not necessarily true for any given home game in team sports, but has more relevance as regards the home and away gates aggregated together and, although untested, it has a priori relevance to horse-racing because of the associated betting market. Equality thus has economic value. Contemporary statements suggest that this uncertainty hypothesis had its supporters in the period under study. The Football League itself noted that ‘the meeting of a strong and weak club … does not form an effective draw’ and one well-versed cricket writer pointed out that: beyond doubt the apathy shown by spectators everywhere may in great measure be set down to the conviction that Yorkshire always had matters their own way … whether this prolonged and immense superiority benefits the game is a debateable matter. A keen competition between several counties struggling for first place until the very last fixture arouses more enthusiasm. The evidence presented in Table II.I does not lend strong support to the uncertainty hypothesis, but, it must be stressed, the results are from an unsophisticated statistical approach which merely produces rank order correlations between attendances and closeness of competition (as defined by relative end-of-season championship positions). Nevertheless, it is not calculated truths which determine a club's policy; what they believe to be true is far more significant. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]