Summary and reflection of an article

Summary and Reflection Summary According to the article, research has shown that football fans, particularly supporters of English Premier League (EPL) teams, prefer to see their teams battle it out with teams that they find inferior and easy to beat. These fans do not prefer attending games with very tough teams that may beat the teams they support or matches where the possibility of a draw is high. Home team supporters usually attend matches where they feel that the likelihood of their teams beating the opponents is much higher than their team losing or drawing. These uncertainty issues have been contributing to the competitive imbalance that has been quite common in English football.
The authors of the article point out that the issue of match-day attendance is greatly influenced by the uncertainty of the outcomes of the matches. Reduced attendance is attributed to increased uncertainty. High attendance is usually witnessed whenever the fans predict that the chances of their team winning are very high compared to losing or drawing. This has brought about issues of revenue sharing because revenue sharing is pegged on receipt sales and broadcast rights issues. Poor attendance will mean that there will be less revenue to share amongst the stakeholders. However, despite this, intervention measures are less apparent in European soccer. Intervention measures are necessary in order to improve competitive balance. The dynamics of the findings of this research are complex because television viewers have different preferences from fans who view matches at the stadiums (Buraimo and Simmons 154).
Critique
The findings of this research are quite controversial because the dynamics of watching matches live from stadiums and on television are quite different. I do not agree with the sentiments of the authors when they claim that fans usually attend stadiums because they prefer to see their teams battle it out with teams that they find inferior and easy to beat. This is because whether to watch a match live from the stadium or to watch it from a television from a place of choice all depends on preference. For example, sometimes, in the English Premier League, there are very strong teams that often play together. Just from general observations, it is evident that such matches are usually attended by very many fans. In such matches, it is usually very difficult to determine which team will win the game. This is because both teams playing in such a match are usually very strong and it is difficult to predict which team may win. Despite the fact that both teams are very strong and it is difficult to predict the outcome of the results, such matches are stilled thronged by a magnitude of fans.
Also, the authors have raised the concept of Goliath and David. This means that even very small teams can beat great teams. In such cases, it may not be very easy to determine which team may win because even small teams may beat great teams. With this in mind, it is not correct to conclude that people will mostly attend matches only when they know that their teams are likely to win because such matches are also attended by very many people.
Work Cited
Babatunde Buraimo and Rob Simmons. “ Do Sports Fans Really Value Uncertainty of Outcome? Evidence from the English Premier League.” International Journal of Sport Finance, 3 (2008): 146-155.