Do Fans Care about Compliance to Doping Regulations in Sports? The Impact of PED Suspension in Baseball

There is little evidence in support of the main economic rationale for regulating athletic doping: that doping reduces fan interest. The introduction of random testing for performance-enhancing drugs (PED) by Major League Baseball (MLB) offers unique data to investigate the issue. The announcement of a PED violation: (a) initially reduces home-game attendance by 8 percent, (b) has no impact on home-game attendance after 12 days, and (c) has a small negative impact on the game attendance for other MLB teams. A lower bound for the cost of a PED violation to a team is $451K. This is the first systematic evidence that doping decreases consumer demand for sporting events.