A Study Of The Relationship Between Professional Baseball Spectators' Attitudes And Intentions To Watch Televised Games In Taiwan

The live telecast of professional baseball games in Taiwan is more and more popular nowadays. But there were very few researches on consumers'behavior toward watching televised games both in Taiwan and abroad.The main purpose of the study was to investigate the attitudes of professional baseball spectators toward the franchises and their intentions to watch televised games in Taiwan. The subjects were 625 baseball fans of on-site spectators in 2004. The Inventory of Taiwan Professional Baseball Spectators'Intention toward Watching Televised Games constructed by the researcher was administrated to measure the attitude of the subjects. Eleven hypotheses were tested by the mean, standard deviation, t-test, Chi square, and one-way ANOVA.The findings of this study were as follows:1. The identity toward the Brother Elephant presented two opposite extremes.2. The spectators were prone to watch the televised games when their favorite team was in competition.3. Under the condition of"being a threat to the favorite team"and"being highly likely to lose", the spectators were prone to watch the televised games when their most dislike team was in competition.4. Under the condition of"being a threat to the favorite team", the spectators were likely to watch the televised games when the neutral team was in competition, but not likely under the condition of"being highly likely to lose".5. The spectators showed high intention of watching the televised games when the"the excellent teams"and"the favorite players"were in competition.6. The"low quality of telecasting","the dislike commentators or telecasters","changing schedule in weekend", and"delay live telecasting"influenced the intention of watching televised games even"the favorite team"was in competition.7. Over one third of the spectators preferred to watch the televised games even the games were held close to their homes.8. Male spectators had higher intention of watching televised games than female spectators.9. The spectators above the age of 46 were the most important population in watching televised professional baseball games, in contrast to the spectators who were at the age of 16-25, students, college-educated, income under NT$20,000/month.10. The demographic of target market is different from on-site and televised games.11. The spectators of LaNew Bear showed the highest intention of watching televised professional baseball games.According to the above findings, 14 suggestions to the Chinese Professional Baseball League, the professional baseball groups, the television companies of sports and for further researches were included.