{"title":"Anthem Protests, Viewer Politics, and the Demand for NFL Games: Assessing the Impact of National Anthem Protests on Viewership","authors":"Noah Sperling, Donald Vandegrift","doi":"10.1177/15270025221078009","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"This paper analyzes the effect of anthem protests on viewership for National Football League (NFL) games controlling for measures of NFL market-specific political beliefs and other demand determinants. To capture the effect of the protests on viewership, we create two classes of protests (unambiguous and ambiguous protests) and support the classification based on the meaning of the protest, actions by NFL owners, and statements by Donald Trump. Using data from all early and late-afternoon Sunday games from the 2014 through 2017 regular NFL seasons, we show that: (1) unambiguous protests reduce viewership in the week following the protests by about 15% while ambiguous protests do not generally produce statistically significant reductions in viewership; (2) the negative effect of unambiguous protests on viewership is particularly strong in metro locations that voted more heavily for Donald Trump in 2016; and (3) following Donald Trump's statements in week 3 of the 2017 season, both ambiguous and unambiguous protests increased and the increase in ambiguous protests was particularly large.","PeriodicalId":51522,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Sports Economics","volume":"23 1","pages":"1017 - 1045"},"PeriodicalIF":1.8000,"publicationDate":"2022-02-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"2","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Journal of Sports Economics","FirstCategoryId":"96","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1177/15270025221078009","RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q2","JCRName":"ECONOMICS","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 2
Abstract
This paper analyzes the effect of anthem protests on viewership for National Football League (NFL) games controlling for measures of NFL market-specific political beliefs and other demand determinants. To capture the effect of the protests on viewership, we create two classes of protests (unambiguous and ambiguous protests) and support the classification based on the meaning of the protest, actions by NFL owners, and statements by Donald Trump. Using data from all early and late-afternoon Sunday games from the 2014 through 2017 regular NFL seasons, we show that: (1) unambiguous protests reduce viewership in the week following the protests by about 15% while ambiguous protests do not generally produce statistically significant reductions in viewership; (2) the negative effect of unambiguous protests on viewership is particularly strong in metro locations that voted more heavily for Donald Trump in 2016; and (3) following Donald Trump's statements in week 3 of the 2017 season, both ambiguous and unambiguous protests increased and the increase in ambiguous protests was particularly large.
期刊介绍:
Journal of Sports Economics publishes scholarly research in the field of sports economics. The aim of the journal is to further research in the area of sports economics by bringing together theoretical and empirical research in a single intellectual venue. Relevant topics include: labor market research; labor-management relations; collective bargaining; wage determination; local public finance; and other fields related to the economics of sports. Published quarterly, the Journal of Sports Economics is unique in that it is the only journal devoted specifically to this rapidly growing field.