Assessing Customer Discrimination in National Television Viewership

Evidence From NCAA Basketball

Bibliographic Data

ID3757078
AuthorsByungju Kang (St. John Fisher University, Rochester, NY, USA), Steven Salaga (0000-0002-7329-9256, University of Georgia, Athens, USA, corresponding author)
Year2025
Publication date2025-08-25
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueAmerican Behavioral Scientist (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0002-7642 • E-ISSN: 1552-3381
PublisherSAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1177/00027642251366030
OpenAlexW4413496912
LanguageEN
References cited13

How do consumers respond to a product based on the racial composition of the individuals representing that product? This is a challenging question to empirically assess, given the difficulty in acquiring data capturing actual consumer behavior while simultaneously controlling for product quality and characteristics. We empirically test for potential customer discrimination in live national television viewership of National Collegiate Athletic Association men's college basketball games. After holding contest quality and characteristics constant, we uncover statistically significant evidence of increased viewership when the number of minutes played by non-White players on the combined team rosters is larger. In models assessing individual race, we find a statistically significant increase in viewership when the number of minutes played by Black players is greater. The results oppose previous empirical work assessing customer discrimination in market-level television viewership in professional sport. JEL Codes: J15, L83, Z20

Advertising · Audience measurement · Basketball · Business · Political science · History · Intellectual Property Rights and Media · Psychology · Sports Analytics and Performance · Sports, Gender, and Society

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