Dataset Information

Football is becoming more predictable; network analysis of 88 thousand matches in 11 major leagues.

ABSTRACT: In recent years, excessive monetization of football and professionalism among the players have been argued to have affected the quality of the match in different ways. On the one hand, playing football has become a high-income profession and the players are highly motivated; on the other hand, stronger teams have higher incomes and therefore afford better players leading to an even stronger appearance in tournaments that can make the game more imbalanced and hence predictable. To quantify and document this observation, in this work, we take a minimalist network science approach to measure the predictability of football over 26 years in major European leagues. We show that over time, the games in major leagues have indeed become more predictable. We provide further support for this observation by showing that inequality between teams has increased and the home-field advantage has been vanishing ubiquitously. We do not include any direct analysis on the effects of monetization on football's predictability or therefore, lack of excitement; however, we propose several hypotheses which could be tested in future analyses.

SUBMITTER: Maimone VM

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8672071 | biostudies-literature |

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

ACCESS DATA

Similar Datasets

Project description:ObjectiveTo investigate the association between popular football games played in Europe and the incidence of traffic accidents in Asia.DesignStudy based on 41 538 traffic accidents involving taxis in Singapore and 1 814 320 traffic accidents in Taiwan, combined with 12 788 European club football games over a seven year period.SettingSingapore and Taiwan.ParticipantsThe largest taxi company in Singapore, with fine grained traffic accident records in a three year span; all traffic accident records in Taiwan in a six year span.ExposureDays when high profile football games were played or not played.Main outcome measureNumber of traffic accidents.ResultsRegression based and time series models suggest that days with high profile European football matches were more positively associated with traffic accidents than days with less popular European football matches. For an approximate €134.74m (£120.25m; $159.76m) increase in average market value for matches played on a given day, approximately one extra accident would occur among Singapore taxi drivers, and for an approximate €7.99m increase in average market value of matches, approximately one extra accident would occur among all drivers in Taiwan. This association remained after control for weather conditions, time of the year, weekend versus weekday effects, driver demographics, and underlying temporal trends. It was also stronger for daytime traffic accidents than for night time traffic accidents, suggesting that the association between high profile football matches and traffic accidents cannot be attributed to night time celebration or attention deficits while watching and driving. Annually, this increased rate of traffic accidents may translate to approximately 371 accidents among taxi drivers in Singapore and approximately 41 079 accidents among the Taiwanese public, as well as economic losses of approximately €821 448 among Singapore taxi drivers and approximately €13 994 409 among Taiwanese drivers and insurers. The total health and economic impact of this finding is likely to be much higher because GMT+8 is the most populous time zone, encompassing 24% of the world's population.ConclusionsDays featuring high profile football matches in Europe were associated with more traffic accidents in Taiwan and Singapore than were days with lower profile football matches. A potential causal mechanism may be Asian drivers losing sleep by watching high profile European matches, which are often played in the middle of the night in Asia.

Dataset Information

Football is becoming more predictable; network analysis of 88 thousand matches in 11 major leagues.

Similar Datasets

OmicsDI is part of the ELIXIR infrastructure

Tweets