The television viewer’s quest for excitement – does the course of a soccer game affect TV ratings?

Abstract

According to Elias and Dunning’s theory of the civilizing process, modern society can be characterized by a lack of excitement. Spare time activities may serve a compensatory function for this perceived monotony of modern life. During leisure, the modern individual searches for excitement from mimetic activities. Consumption of sports broadcasts may also be motivated by this search for excitement. Based on this assumption, this study analyzes the fluctuation of TV viewership during the course of soccer matches. Based on to-the-minute data on TV ratings of soccer matches shown in German free-to-air (FTA) TV in 2012, it can be demonstrated that a high level of entertainment, surprise and suspense are related to an increase in TV viewership. Most significantly, however, it is the degree of suspense, i.e. the uncertainty of the outcome of the match, which keeps audiences tuned in. These results are highly consistent with the assumptions deduced from Elias and Dunning’s theory.

Keywords:

• Excitement
• entertainment
• civilizing process
• TV viewership
• demand for sport

Notes

Disclosure statements

The authors report no conflicts of interest. The authors alone are responsible for the content and writing of this article.

Notes on contributors

Michael Mutz is a professor for sociology of sport at the Institute of Sports Science at Justus-Liebig-University Gießen. His research interest is on sociology of sport, leisure and culture with a primary focus on social integration, social inequality and ethnic diversity.

Kathrin Wahnschaffe is a PhD student and a research assistant at the Institute of Sport Science at Georg-August-University Göttingen. Her research interest is on social theory, figurational sociology, violence and deviant behaviour in sport and among sports fans.

Notes

1 http://www.media-control.de/tv-rekord-historischer-abend-in-belo-horizonte.html (Last access: April 8, 2015).

2 http://www.agf.de/daten/zuschauermarkt/hitliste (Last access: May 8, 2013).

3 The results from Forrest, Simmons, and Buraimo (2005) also reveal that the audience’s interest in soccer games increases during the second half of the season, since the crucial matches in regard to championship and relegation draw closer then. This finding is also in accordance with our theoretical rationale.

4 The results concerning spectator demand for sports broadcasts are somewhat inconsistent. For instance, in their analysis of TV ratings of the German Bundesliga broadcast ‘Ran,’ Dietl, Franck, and Roy (2009, 72) conclude that ‘not a single measure of uncertainty of outcome has a significant effect on the demand for the broadcast.’ It needs to be pointed out, though, that in this TV show no live matches are presented, rather only short summaries of the current Bundesliga match day. Therefore, one may assume that the need for excitement is of inferior importance to spectators, due to the fact that the games are already over and final scores already known by most TV viewers.

5 The market values of the starting eleven in each game were obtained from the website www.transfermarkt.de.

6 In this regard, our findings are also in line with sociological diagnoses which conceive contemporary society as an individualized event society (e.g. Schulze, 1993) where individuals are seeking for high levels of well-being, positive emotional stimulation and a favourable hedonic balance (see also Mutz & Kämpfer, 2013).