You probably already know that storytelling is important. Our brains seem to be hardwired to remember stories better than anything else. So this research maybe doesn’t come as a surprise, still it’s something nice to know. The study has concluded that sports fans love to root for a hero and against a villain, but if the game is exciting, they’ll enjoy it no matter who wins.
This research has been published in the Journal of Media Psychology and examines emotional experiences, outcome satisfaction, and enjoyment of athletic events, particularly ones featuring individual athletes rather than team sports.
The lead author Colleen Bee is an assistant professor of marketing at Oregon State University. He states that the Olympics are a good example of an event where fans often cheer for little-known athletes competing in little-watched sports. The allure for these casual fans is not necessarily the sport itself. The spectacle and inherent drama associated with an athletic event is enough to make fans watch.
“Knowing something about the personal lives and personalities of these athletes gives the casual fan a reason to root for or against someone,” Bee said. “The stories matter here. It magnifies the experience of watching the game, and gives people a reason to watch.” (source)
Abstract from the research:
The purpose of the current research is to examine the influence of affective dispositions and the sequencing of affective and cognitive responses to mediated entertainment. Affective dispositions are manipulated to match a liked competitor against one who is disliked. The results indicate that viewers’ emotional responses and assessments of satisfaction with a win or loss were dependent on competitor liking. A hedonic reversal occurs in viewer disconfirmation emotions (relief and disappointment) and satisfaction judgments based on outcome desirability. A desirable (undesirable) outcome was one in which a liked (disliked) competitor won, or a disliked (liked) competitor lost. We also found evidence of mediated moderation such that competitor liking moderated the mediating effect of relief and disappointment on outcome satisfaction following an outcome. Outcome satisfaction, conceptualized as a cognitive judgment in our model, was then positively related to viewer enjoyment of the overall experience. Additionally our hypothesized model was found to outperform two competing models. The results elucidate the complex intertwining of affect and cognition in predicting viewer enjoyment of mediated entertainment.