Week to Week Attendance and Competitive Balance in the National Football League, pp. 239-252
We examine the relationship between game day attendance, uncertainty of outcome, and team and facility quality in the National Football League. Based on results from a reduced form model of game day attendance at 5,495 regular season NFL games from the 1985-2008 seasons, we find weak evidence that attendance increases when fans expect the home team to win by a large margin, and strong evidence that attendance decreases when the home team is expected to lose, contrary to the predictions of the Uncertainty of Outcome Hypothesis.