She shoots, she scores! The crowd goes wild. Days or weeks later, attendees may give glowing reports of that final hockey goal or how much they loved the game.
But in that moment of the winning goal, what are fans thinking and feeling? Are they as invested in the game as they say they are?
Michael Naraine is on an eight-member international research team that explored how to answer these and other questions in real time.
"Sport researchers primarily rely on fans self-reporting their thoughts and perceptions," says the Brock University Associate Professor of Sport Management.
"Fans have a tendency to want to boost how they feel," he says. "They may say, oh, yeah, that moment was awesome,' but in actuality, their experience wasn't this cataclysmic inflection point that they made it out to be."
Research on audiences' experience with games helps sport organizations, marketers and businesses develop ticket sales strategies and methods of engaging fans and enhancing their viewing experience, says Naraine.
The University of Waterloo-led team tested out an imaging system called functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) capturing fans' brain activity in real time during key moments of a hockey game, such as when a goal is scored.
The team also sought to measure participants' ego involvement, which is an interest in an activity, event or product important or central to one's life. In sport consumer research, ego involvement is linked to loyalty, repeat purchase behaviour and viewing satisfaction.
The researchers sought to verify three theories:
- fNIRS is a feasible way of examining brain activity during a realistic sport viewership experience;
- activation in the brain's prefrontal cortex - the area responsible for higher-level functioning - will increase at key moments in a game; and
- these brain effects will be more pronounced in participants with relatively higher levels of ego involvement.
Twenty young adults were divided into two groups of high and low ego involvement based on their responses to a questionnaire.
Participants were fitted with a band across the forehead that was connected to the fNIRS machine. They were instructed to support either the Nottingham Panthers or the Cardiff Devils in a segment they watched from the United Kingdom's Elite Ice Hockey League.
The 25-minute segment included clips of scores and game stoppages designed to stimulate the brain.
The researchers found fNIRS was effective in capturing all participants' brain activity as they viewed the U.K. hockey game.
Compared to participants with low ego involvement, the prefrontal cortex in those with high ego involvement had greater activation during key moments of the game and particularly at critical points, such as when a goal was scored.
"Overall, findings suggest that cognitive processing might contribute meaningfully to understanding when emotionally invested individuals are most engaged in an action sequence during a sporting event," Naraine says. "Of course, we know many fans are passionate, but now, using fNIRS, we can examine their mind to determine how involved they actually are during games."
He says the team's research results present fascinating possibilities "as our society becomes more data-fied', tailored and personalized" in the digital realm.
For example, knowing when consumers are less engaged in a game, teams could send an instant push notification to viewers' phones offering them 20 per cent off merchandise, incentivizing purchase behaviour but also stimulating game interest for long-term loyalty, says Naraine.
The research team's study, "Understanding the sport viewership experience using functional near-infrared spectroscopy," was published last month in Scientific Reports.
