Displaying Winning Probabilities in Volleyball Interests Audiences Sensitive to Probability

Tomoyuki Maekawa, Kazuhiro Ueda

Abstract: Interest in watching sports is supposed to depend on uncertainty of the winner. Displaying probability information in the middle of the match possibly make audiences get interested if the probability is consistent with their intuition. To test this hypothesis, volleyball videos are captioned with the winning probabilities based on different models; one is consistent with statistical data while the other is not. These videos are shown to participants and rated for interestingness and the consistency of the displayed probabilities with their predictions. The results show that the average interestingness does not significantly differ between the conditions. However, participants who perceive the displayed probabilities to be consistent tend to find the video interesting only if they are shown correct captions. This implies that allowing audiences to choose whether probability information is shown may help to make sports matches more interesting.