Gender information and perceived quality: An experiment with professional soccer performance

Abstract

Whether one looks at revenue, investment or coverage, men’s sports do better than women’s. Many assume that absolute differences in quality of athletic performance are the driving force. However, the existence of stereotypes should alert us to another possibility: gender information might influence perceived quality. We perform an experiment in which 613 participants viewed clips of elite female and male soccer players. In the control group, participants evaluated unmodified videos where the gender of the players is clear to see. In the treatment group, participants evaluated the same videos but with gender obscured by blurring. Using a regression analysis, we find that participants rate men’s videos higher – but only when they know they are watching men. When blurring obscures the gender, ratings for female and male athletes do not differ. We discuss implications for research and the sports industry.