Assessing Customer Discrimination in National Television Viewership: Evidence From NCAA Basketball

How do consumers respond to a product based on the racial composition of the individuals representing that product? This is a challenging question to empirically assess, given the difficulty in acquiring data capturing actual consumer behavior while simultaneously controlling for product quality and characteristics. We empirically test for potential customer discrimination in live national television viewership of National Collegiate Athletic Association men’s college basketball games. After holding contest quality and characteristics constant, we uncover statistically significant evidence of increased viewership when the number of minutes played by non-White players on the combined team rosters is larger. In models assessing individual race, we find a statistically significant increase in viewership when the number of minutes played by Black players is greater. The results oppose previous empirical work assessing customer discrimination in market-level television viewership in professional sport. JEL Codes: J15, L83, Z20.