Why Do Fans Favor Retro Ballparks?

Oliver Hahl, Tepper School Assistant Professor of Organizational Theory and Strategy, speaks about his research on the relationship of free agency in Major League Baseball to fans' preference for retro-style ballparks, such as Pittsburgh's PNC Park.

Video Transcript

Authenticity becomes more appreciated once we realize that there could be a gap between what I'm presenting and what my actual motivations are.

The title of my paper is "Turning Back the Clock in Baseball: The Increased Prominence of Extrinsic Rewards and Demand for Authenticity." What got me interested is, I was actually a college baseball player and I played in two stadiums — Major League stadiums — in my career. They were both these big, huge, concrete behemoth things. In each case, a few years after I played in those ballparks, they built these new, kind of retro-looking traditional classic stadiums that we see today.

What really changed was in the 1970s where free agency made it so that the players could now leave and switch to different teams, and they could go and play for higher amounts of money, more salary.

The presented identity is, "I'm playing for the love of the game." But the fans now, it's revealed to them that they're not, that they're in it for money as well. And so what the fans were looking for was something that revealed to them, "Oh, we're committed to the game. We're interested in the history of the game. We're interested in these things that have been lost."

I ran an experiment that basically triggered fans' concern for greed or not and then asked them what types of stadium features they appreciated, and when their concern for authenticity goes up, they appreciate more traditional features in stadiums.

And so we think about stadiums that existed that were classic-style stadiums before then, so Wrigley Field, Fenway Park, Comiskey Park. These were all kind of carryovers from 1910 that didn't get replaced. Post free agency, all of a sudden, the classic-style stadiums and the retro stadiums become more highly valued. The attendance goes up in all these stadiums. So when they lose free agents in the past year, they appreciate the classic style a bit more and there's higher attendance. That's kind of what we find.