By David Butler

We have become accustomed to gambling adverts during live sporting events. Recently, many firms have made a major push on marketing the ‘two goals ahead payout’ promotion to attract customers. This is for single bets, if the team you bet on to win goes two goals ahead at any stage, the bookmakers pays out regardless of whether the opposition comes back to draw or win the match. I hazard to guess that the rationale for this is that these leading teams most likely win anyway. Paying out early gives the bookmakers more time to encourage the bettor to reinvest profits.

For bettors, like many gambling ‘specials’, this offer may sound enticing but it does not correspond to a significant ‘discount’, despite the marketing efforts. Take this season’s EPL, this offer cost the bookmakers on only 11 matches (circa 3% of matches where a two goal lead was spurned and the team did not go on to win). The vast majority of teams that have a two goal lead do go on to win anyway. Very often it is the underdog who lose the two goal lead and fail to win – these underdogs would probably be less staked on.

The bookmakers have become experts at offering specials and promotions which intuition would suggest are simple or a good deal but are not as good as they appear.  The above promotion nudges bettors away from backing draws. For a customer to benefit from the insurance, it also requires 4 goals in a match and at least two for each team, which is an achievement in and of itself. Then it requires goals to be ordered in a specific sequence. 

By Robbie Butler

Horse racing fans in this part of the world will be well aware that the 2023/24 National Hunt season ends this weekend in Great Britain and the following weekend in Ireland. Willie Mullins is set to become the first Irish trainer in 50 years to become a Champion British Trainer at the weekend. It is a remarkable feat for somebody based in Ireland that largely ignores national hunt racing in the UK outside of the top races. 

The reason this is possible is because the Champion Trainer titles (in both Ireland and Great Britain) are based on accumlated prizemoney. The current GB standing are presented below.

Despite just 25 wins in Great Britain this season, Mullins has accumlated more than £3.1 million. This is becasue he won races such the the Cheltenham Gold Cup. Champion Hurdle and Aintree Grand National. Both Paul Nicholls and Dan Skelton have won over 100 races but trail Mullins. 

The same metric is used in Ireland. The current standings are below. Again Mullins leads the way.

However, when it comes to the Champion Jockeys Champions in both countries, it is not prizemoney that is used to crown the winner but total number of winners. This is a strange querk in the rules and can lead to very different outcomes. The present standings for the two championships are presented below.

The second table (for Ireland) includes prizemoney. Unlike the Champion Trainer ranking, it uses the number of wins. Willie Mullins' retained jockey Paul Townend is second on the list, despite winning the most prizemoney. If this were the Trainers Championship he would be first. 

Competition design matters. Differences can really effect outcomes. Even in the same sport. 

By John Considine

The above question has surfaced in a range of settings over the last few years.  A morning radio show host concludes some interviews with the question “Do you wash your legs in the shower?”  The first time I heard the guest reply with “No” I found it hard to believe.  I could not imagine having a shower without washing my legs.  The more I started to think about it, the more I was reminded of Hans Rosling’s Factfulness: Ten reasons we’re wrong about the world and why things are better than you think.
 
Over the years, Rosling administered a range of questionnaires to educated audiences.  Many of the questions are reproduced in the book.  Each question has three possible answers.  A person with no knowledge of the topic, who randomly guesses, should get 33% of the answers correct.  Yet, the educated humans fall below this level.  The poor performance is of a particular type.  We believe things are worse than they are.  Rosling argues that if we understood the facts then we would feel better about the world.  He illustrates this fact with stories of how things have improved during his lifetime.  Some of the improvements in my lifetime might explain why people might not automatically wash their legs in the shower.
 
At home, our first shower was an extension to the bath.  A Y-shaped hosing was attached to the bath taps and a shower curtain was fitted.  It was crucial to ensure that this curtain was tucked inside the bath.  Compared to a bath, the shower required less water heating.  One still needed to manually turn on and off the immersion.  Failure to turn off the immersion was a bigger error than failure to properly align the show curtain.  I’d say there are few of my age who can’t remember “did you turn the immersion off?”
 
But it was only when our GAA facilities were upgraded, in the middle of my teenage years, that my showering habits formed.  In the dressing room there were a row of five communal showers.  The walls and floors were tiled so that there was no need for shower curtains.  It was first-come first-served, although there would nearly be as much bumping for position in the showers as there was on the field.  Some would have bars of soap.  Others shampoo.  A few borrowed each.  Only the odd person would have deodorant.
 
At a time, I was a member of a relatively successful under-16 team.  Our season extended into the evenings of failing natural light, no floodlights, and muddy fields.  We trained in shorts.  Legs, hands, and heads were exposed to the elements.  You had to wash your legs in the showers.  Legs were the skin surfaces with the greatest amounts of visible dirt.  This explained the biggest part of my reaction to the radio show guest.  My initial reaction was that they were not a sports person.  Then I started to think about it a little more.
 
After training the vast majority would walk home - cleaner than when we left for training.  Walking was our primary means of getting to underage sessions.  At the time car ownership per family was much lower.  Within five or six years a few of my teammates emigrated out of necessity rather than as a lifestyle choice.  I did so on a temporary basis.  For two summers in the late 1980s I found myself in the midst of the GAA community in Boston.  Hurling training took place twice a week on a dusty, communal, American football field.  At the end of training, we would jump in our cars or pickup trucks, return to our accommodation, and shower away the mixture of dust and sweat.  The gap in economic circumstance between Ireland and the US obvious to all.  As humans were emigrating to the US, US capital was emigrating to Ireland.  The Celtic Tiger was less than a decade away.
 
Nowadays, one can spot an under-18 sporting session by the number of parked cars with N-plates displayed (or the occasional tractor in rural areas).  Many now finish their sporting activity, return to their vehicle, and drive home to shower and avail of a range of grooming products.
 
Mud is less of a problem.  Grass fields are better kept and protected.  In August 2001, two All-Ireland hurling semi-finals were played on consecutive days in the GAA Headquarters.  The stadium was being revamped and it was close to being finished.  However, the field was a quagmire on that weekend.  Within a decade the surface was replaced by a mixture of grass sod with a synthetic element.  The scenes from 2001 are gone.  The improvement has trickled down.  Our local field uses the same grass technology for the goalmouths.  Moreover, one does not have to travel far to find fully artificial turf surfaces.  Government grants have helped many localities install these surfaces.  Artificial green strings and small rubber pellets do not require one to wash one’s legs in the shower.
 
There are teenagers in my locality who have played club and school games on such surfaces.  It is 33 years since I travelled to the Sky Dome in Toronto to play my only hurling game on such a surface.  The home of the Toronto Blue Jays hosted two exhibition games.  One was a hurling game and the other was a gaelic football game.  We marvelled at the stadium and the surface.  A surface that everyone in our local club now trains upon.  Many astroturf facilities have floodlights to facilitate sessions deep into the dark winter nights.
 
Starting with life expectancy, Rosling lists 16 items that have improved dramatically during his life.  We could add a few from the sporting sphere.

By Robbie Butler

Almost 10 years ago I first blogged about the use of the Premier League's Fantasy Football game to explain the concept of opportunity cost. My most recent effort was in 2017.

Below are two screen grabs that present the best perforing team to date, and the most expensive team, as things currently stand.  

It is important to note, neither team is attainable, as both exceed the spending limits. The highest scoring team (left panel) also has 4 Arsenal players (only 3 are permitted under the rules of the game), while the most expsensive team also breaks this rule with 5 Liverpool players. 

Interestingly, Man City occupy just two places in the perfromance metric. The same number as Spurs. It would seem the brillance of City is spread throughout the squad. Liverpool rely on Salah, while Arsenal's defence and Bukayo Saka are the big performers. Cole Palmer, Ollie Watkins and Dominik Solanke are obvious standouts for their respective clubs. Bernd Leno is also having a fine season for Fulham and is the league's number one goalkeeper by Fantasy Football points. Fabian Schar (Newcastle) and Pedro Porro (Spurs) also appear good value for money.

Underperfomances are witnessed by those expense players (right) that do not appear to the left. Ben White, Salah, Son, Saka, Watkins and Haaland all escape this - they are value for money it would seem. However, the same cannot be said of pretty much the Liverpool defense (Alisson, Alexander-Arnold, Van Dijk and Roberston) as well as De Bruyne, Tripper, Odegaard and Toney. Some of these players suffered injuries and suspension and can be excused somewhat. The only Man United player to appear is goalkeeper Onana. It sums up much of the club's season so far.

By Ed Valentine

Several years ago, when football had character, there was a 20-30 second deluge of lager fuelled emotion each time a player scored a goal, at least in the English top division. Since the introduction of VAR that has evaporated away and has been replaced with a sort of “unrecognised item in the bagging area” check out moment as a team of referees validate if indeed the goal scorer was offside by the width of a cigarette paper.
 
Beyond the headlines and arguments about VAR errors or overall suitability, very little is spoken about regarding the rates of key events within games. Below is a short analysis of EPL data in the 5 years prior to the introduction of VAR and the 5 years from its introduction. There are about 70 games remaining in the current 23/24 EPL season so it’s not a perfect fit but generally an idea of trends can be examined.
 
About 10% more penalties have been awarded since the start of 19/20. It would seem, by my casual observations, that the increase in penalties awarded is off the back of what Robbie says here where the argument “I didn’t see that as my view was obscured” overrides the embarrassment of “I thought I saw but actually I was wrong”.
 
Clubs and players will know this and may approach scenarios when in the opposing penalty area to ‘draw the foul’ and go to ground more easily. This was evident in the recent game at Stamford Bridge where Madueke went to ground following Dalot losing his footing with the slightest of contact on the Chelsea substitute. VAR validated the on field decision which handed Chelsea the win from a losing position 4 minutes earlier. Great drama. If this was not blown on filed would VAR have overruled? Perhaps referees are calling more fouls in the penalty area knowing the support mechanism of the video assistants is there. All challenges in the box are checked while play continues in any case. We’d need to examine the number of overrules to get an indication.

Players may also be less inclined to engage in the 50:50 style challenge knowing that VAR will police it unlike before. This may support the drop in red cards awarded. It also adds to the drama element as 11 v 11 has better competitive balance than 11 v 10 generally. 

By Daragh O'Leary

In the most recent episode of the Overlap fan debate Gary Neville did something that I rarely give him credit for. He made a good point. Panellists on the show began talking about how great it is having smaller clubs like Luton Town in the Premier League and naturally enough, people began to discuss the ever growing gap between the revenue generated by the Premier League compared to the second tier Championship below.

The fact that a club as small as Luton Town can get into the Premier League and see a massive increase in their revenue is one of the great things about the pyramid system in English football. Teams can dare to go from non-league to the very pinnacle of football. Not only does this provide a massive incentive for lower teams to reach for the stars, the added factor of smaller clubs being able to slay one of the Premier League’s giants provides some extra drama to the Premier League.

These benefits which are derived from the pyramid system were some of the reasons that Neville was disgusted with the proposed Super League a few years ago. This was a proposed alternative competition to the UEFA Champions League where only the traditional Big Six clubs in England would be able to participate against other top European teams. Many criticised this proposition off the basis that big clubs had no God given right to play in Europe’s top competition and rather qualification should remain a possibility for any team in England which can finish in the top 4 of the Premier League.

While I agree with this critique, I think a point made by Neville on the Overlap could explain why the Big Six clubs wanted the Super League. Were Neville an economist, he may simply have called the newly promoted clubs to the Premier League free riders. Instead, he took the long way around and explained that the Premier League needs the Big Six because they are responsible for the vast majority of the interest in the competition. This is probably why punishments for the Big Six were so mild after they tried to join the Super League – a £3.4 million fine rather than relegation or expulsion.

Newly promoted teams to the Premier League see a massive increase in their revenue not because they are all of a sudden so much better at football that there is now massive international interest in watching them, but rather because they have gained entry into a league where they will be playing against some incredibly popular teams.

Yes, smaller teams are important and it is great to enjoy the occasional giant slaying, but I doubt most people would be too fussed over which club does the slaying. I, and I assume other fans, am equally as happy to watch Luton Town play one of the Big Six as I would be to watch Wimbledon, Leeds, QPR, or Leicester City do the same. As for how happy I am to watch matches where smaller clubs play other smaller clubs, it depends what else is on!

This is a nice illustration of the free rider problem in economics whereby certain individuals within a group can benefit from a resource they share with others which they don’t contribute towards as much themselves. Of course newly promoted teams in the Premier League deserve to be where they are and certainly shouldn’t be happy to simply “make up the numbers”, but the main reason they make as much money as they do is because of the interest in their famous opposition.

By David Butler

Journalists reported over the weekend that the Premier League is considering abolishing points deductions for breaches in financial and sustainability rules. A  ‘luxury tax’ was suggested as a replacement punishment.

The rules were applied recently, and points were taken off clubs – the most important currency in this elite context given the wealth of several owners. We then all saw how quiet the January transfer window became.

The current application of the rules make me wonder whether clubs have implicitly imposed a salary cap on themselves. This is not a traditional salary cap per se but rather a dynamic one, that varies across clubs based on revenues. Perhaps the motivation to abolish points deductions is based on the argument that elite talent may move to other leagues as the rules are effectively constricting wages. Having the best talent in world playing in the EPL is obviously in the interest of the clubs and broadcasters.

Sticking within the current rules, even with some type of shadow salary cap that favours bigger clubs, would be my preference (as a fan anyway). A luxury tax would likely cause greater inequality and license Manchester City, Newcastle etc. to splurge. These clubs would likely prefer overspending while weaker clubs, trying to compete, will likely encounter financial difficulties covering the tax. Sustainability rules may achieve the opposite of their stated purpose. Luxury taxes exist in other sports (e.g NBA) but their logic is based on a consistent salary cap across all franchises.  I'm unsure of how the rules work in terms of historical applications, but it is coincidental these rule changes are being proposed when Manchester City are facing hundreds of alleged charges. 

By Robbie Butler

It appears that the Sky Bet Championship - the second tier of English football - will introduce VAR next season following consultation with stakeholders. Up to now, the league had simply used the traditional approach of the referee and other match officials to make decisions.

The league’s resistance to VAR encouraged me and I found myself watching the Championship more regularly than before. My motivation was because football - either in person or on television - is an entirely different product once VAR is introduced. The consumption of the game changes and the emotion that caused me to fall in love with the sport decades ago is diminished once VAR comes into play.

VAR also permits a greater degree of manipulation, by those officiating, that is not possible under the traditional refereeing model. Watching games recently under the VAR model feels different to before. It is almost as if those managing the game (administrators, broadcasters, etc.) want every match to crescendo in the final moments with some sort of dramatic conclusion. 

Football has been like this for more than 100 years. It is often very boring. Data since the 1870s will show you that most games end either 0-0, 1-0 or 1-1. It was never supposed to be about drama for spectators and broadcasters. It was about sporting excellence. 

While the move to use VAR seems to be unstoppable, those of us that dislike the technology need to accept it is here. That is fine. But the product is now different. Those selling it should know this too.