Investigating Sport Fan Attitudes Toward Tanking: The Role of Values-Based Connections

Abstract

While previous research has found support for the existence of tanking in professional sport, attitudinal complexities surrounding the phenomenon have yet to be investigated. This study utilized Amazon’s Mechanical Turk service to obtain a national sample of National Basketball Association (NBA) fans. The sample contained fans of all thirty NBA teams. Respondents provided data regarding their overall attitudes toward tanking as well as their underlying old school values, time-oriented values, and ethics-based values. Results indicate that fans have a relatively strong dislike for perceived tanking and that a team’s win-loss record has very little influence on fans’ generally negative attitudes. Furthermore, these attitudes appear to be guided by fan values.