Productivity and New Audiences: Empirical Evidence From Professional Basketball

Changing clubs in professional sports lets a player face a new supportive crowd during home games, hence the question arises how performance is impacted by changing teams. This article measures the impact of the changed audience on free throw shooting performance. The data set includes all free throw attempts for 10 seasons from the National Basketball Association (NBA) and distinguishes between home and away games. Results support the idea that only free agents who were able to select a new team worsened their performance due to social pressure experienced during home games, while the performance during away games is unaffected. They suggest that especially bad free throw shooters suffer from facing this additional pressure