Eye Tracking: The Championsleague Final Through the Eyes of Soccer Fans

Teltow (ots) - Valuable insights into the reception of sports
entertainment and emotional media events from a unique eye tracking
study of Bayern vs. Dortmund 2013

Just in time for the 2014 Championsleague Final between Real and
Atlético Madrid and shortly after the encounter of last year's
protagonists Bayern Munich and Borussia Dortmund in the German cup
final, the University of Tübingen and the Leibniz Knowledge Media
Research Center announce unique insights into the mind of soccer fans
revealed by a large scale eye tracking study.

The researchers used 21 contact free eye tracking systems
(http://www.smivision.com/redm) by SensoMotoric Instruments (SMI)
(http://www.smivision.com) to follow the gaze behaviour of Dortmund
and Munich fans viewing a live stream of the 2013 final. The goal:
Explain differences among fan groups in recalling scenes of a soccer
game found by previous research.

The results provide valuable insights into the reception of sports
entertainment: The fan bias does not result from group specific
viewing behavior. It develops in later information processing steps
and involvement. This process seems to be triggered by more certainty
in judging critical scenes of the favourite team.

Watch video: http://youtu.be/hcY-fr4_3Xc

Results of the study will be presented at the ICA Conference in
Seattle, WA, USA in May and at the DGPs Conference in Bochum, Germany
in September.

Read more on results: http://tinyurl.com/et-soccer-en

Markus Huff, University of Tübingen: "We are glad that SMI helped
us to realize this unique study. The eye tracking data provided
valuable insights as it allowed us to break down dynamic processes
over time. The stronger the camera guided the gaze, the more coherent
eye movements of fan groups were. Therefore, the structure of an
event, the characteristics of visual material, and not deliberate
cognitive decisions, strongly influence our perception of emotional
media events."

Eberhard Schmidt, SensoMotoric Instruments: "New small and
portable eye tracking systems like SMI's RED-m used for this study do
not interrupt the natural viewing experience and moreover facilitate
large scale eye tracking studies. We expect to see many more
application of similar multiple system and parallel data collection
settings for example in digital classrooms or large market research
studies."

Contact SMI:
Stefanie Gehrke, stefanie.gehrke@smi.de,
Phone: +49 (0) 172 3808 537

Contact University of Tübingen:
Markus Huff, Junior Professor markus.huff@uni-tuebingen.de,
Phone: +49 7071 29-75612