Chapter Ii

The purpose of this chapter is to review the literature on attendance at professional sporting events. In addition, rational addiction models and theories will be surveyed. There is an abundant literature on both of these topics, and each will be discussed based on its relevance to the present research on rational addiction among fans of the National Football League (NFL). First, the chapter will begin by discussing literature on attendance at all types of sporting events. Studies of attendance for both collegiate and professional American football will be examined at the end of the attendance section. Second, this chapter will explore the body of literature on rational addiction, examining current research in the area and discussing how it may be applied to habit-forming goods such as alcohol and cigarettes. The majority of empirical studies that test rational addiction have studied either cigarettes, alcohol, or illicit drugs. The final section of this chapter will discuss an unpublished working paper that applies a rational addiction model to explore attendance and ticket pricing at professional baseball games. FIGURE 2.1 is a visual representation of the available literature pertaining to rational addiction and NFL attendance.