Customer Discrimination and Outcome Uncertainty in the World Baseball Classic: The Case of the Taiwanese Television Audience

This chapter investigates the effects of customer discrimination and outcome uncertainty on Taiwanese television viewers by using World Baseball Classic (WBC) match data. The micro data of TV ratings per minute provide comprehensive insights into the behavior of viewers. After controlling for players’ performance on the field and the contemporaneous errors associated with the dependent variables, the results show that TV ratings were higher when Taiwanese and Asian players played. Taiwanese TV viewers exhibited customer discrimination favoring Taiwanese and Asian players but against players of other nationality; the largest effect of Taiwanese customer discrimination of this variety was against South Africa. Moreover, total points scored are significantly positively related to TV ratings in the analysis. Coefficients of pitch-by-pitch uncertainty close to the end of a game are positively related to TV ratings. The evidence supports the hypothesis of outcome uncertainty.