According to a new study, sport fans don't really mind what the end result of a game is as long as the game is interesting.
Cheering for one's favorite team and seeing them win is probably the best part of watching a game. However, a new study conducted by a professor from the Oregon State University found that a sports fan doesn't really care about the end result of a game as long as it's interesting. Of course, booing the villain and cheering the hero is an added bonus.
"Knowing something about the personal lives and personalities of these athletes gives the casual fan a reason to root for or against someone," said Colleen Bee, an assistant professor of marketing at Oregon State University. "The stories matter here. It magnifies the experience of watching the game, and gives people a reason to watch."
For the study, Bee had participants watch speed-skating competitions. Bee made sure that all participants knew nothing of the athletes in the sport. Then, she made up heroic and villainous characters for each athlete and told them to the participants.
It was found that the participants rooted for athletes with heroic characteristics and hoped that the "villains" would lose.
"There are people who enjoy watching famous athletes compete even though they may not like them personally, or feel like they aren't good people," Bee said. "Yet, because they are exciting to watch, and in many cases because they have an exciting story, sports fans still enjoy watching them compete."
However, while these participants were disappointed when a villain won, they didn't care too much about the defeat if the game they watched was interesting.
"Casual sport fans often enjoy the experience of a highly competitive event even when the outcome is not desirable, due to the entertaining and exciting nature of suspense," Bee said, pointing to her last study which found that winning or losing games did not matter so much as whether or not the game was close.