By John Considine

This time twenty years ago I was in York, England undertaking a Ph.D. in economics.  During the year I tutored quantitative methods in a course delivered by Bill Gerrard.  At the time I would have described Bill as a friendly, tall, long-haired  Scot with an interest in Celtic, Leeds United and John Maynard Keynes.  Today I would describe Bill as the "stats guy" with Saracens rugby football club - a club that this weekend will contest the Heineken Cup final - who has written widely on the economics of football.

Over the intervening two decades I have occasionally pestered Bill for advice on academic matters, sporting statistics matters, and a combination of the two.  For example, when I was looking for a reading list on sports economics I banged off an email to Bill.  The emails were always returned promptly and they were packed with helpful comments.

Ten years ago Bill visited Cork to give a seminar.  During his visit he explained how he discovered Moneyball.  He also provided an entertaining account of what seemed like excessive payments for some players in the Premier League!!!

Plenty has been written elsewhere about Bill's role in the Saracens project and his work on performance analysis (see here, here and here).  Today he will be watching to see if that work has come to fruition at a European level.  The following week they could also become champions of England.  It would crown an already successful season for the club.  I for one will be wishing Saracens and Bill are successful.

By Robbie Butler

The World Cup is only days away. Anticipation is growing by the day and I for one cannot wait for the tournament to start. Sadly, many in Brazil feel differently. Continued reports of civil unrest and street protests are emerging from the South American country. This week, football legend and Brazilian national icon Pele labelled preparations for the tournament “a disgrace”. The former Santos star and three-time World Cup winner blames “ongoing corruption that has  delayed construction of the stadiums”. 

Probably the best example of stadium excesses is the story of Estádio Nacional, the newly built multi-purpose stadium in the capital Brasília. Demolished in 2010, the stadium was rebuilt, and now boasts a maximum capacity of just over 70,000 seats. To date it is the second most expensive football arena on the planet, costing three times more than the original estimate ($300m).  Estádio Nacional will host seven matches during the month long World Cup, one of which is Cameroon versus Brazil.

While this might not sound too outrageous, here’s the catch. 

Brasília is located in the Distrito Federal (Federal District) and has about twenty football teams. Of these twenty, only five could be considered clubs of note, having competed in the upper tiers of professional football in Brazil. 
 
Next season, the highest rated football teams in the district will compete in the Campeonato Brasileiro Série D, the 4th tier of Brazilian football! Brasília Futebol Clube, Brasiliense Futebol Clube and Sociedade Esportiva do Gama will fly the flag in Série D for the Distrito Federal. To give you an idea of it's popularity, attendance at the first leg of the final game in Série D in 2013 was just over 4,000 people. Nearly 18,000 people attended the FAI Cup final between Drogheda United and Sligo Rovers in November 2013.  

The World Cup will end on Sunday 13th of July. One country will celebrate long into the early hours, and in the days and weeks ahead. For the vast majority, it will be a case of what could have been. Heroes will be born. No doubt villains will emerge. And while the rest of us get back to normal, happy in the knowledge that our memories will last a lifetime, the people of Brasília will be left with a white elephant. A stadium fit for the finest clubs on the planet with no team to fill it. 

70,000 empty seats. $12,857.14 per seat. Almost identical to the average annual income (GDP per capita) in Brazil. $900,000,000 could build an awful lot of new schools and hospitals. 

Ed Valentine

During the Alex Ferguson reign at Old Trafford, Manchester United seemed to score many goals in the last 10 minutes of games.  Or maybe this was just a judgement based on a few key observations such as the 1999 Champions Final.  What is less in doubt is that the last 10mins of games during the David Moyes era seemed to cost the club.  Below is the top of the Premier League table if games had finished at the 80mins mark.  United would have finished 5th instead of 7th.

The last 10 minutes of games also seemed to cost Fulham their place in the top flight of English football.  If the games had stopped after 80mins then West Brom would have been relegated.

By John Considine

Last Thursday week, I featured in a report on RTE's Primetime dealing with the issue of Sports Capital Grants (here).  Around the same time a related post appeared on this blog (here).  The same day in the Dail (parliament), Minister Micheal Ring was speaking about the issue of eligibility for the grants.  In his statements, the Minister said  "I did what Dr. John Considine wanted to me to do and when he found no reason to criticise local schemes, he examined the regional schemes" (here).  It is good to see that the Minister is taking my advice on board for the "local" schemes.  With a bit of luck he will apply the criteria to ALL scheme in the next round of grants.

By Ed Valentine and John Considine

During the 2013-14 Premier League season there was a total of 53 red cards issued.  There were 43 games with one red card and 5 games with two reds.  The away team got 70% of these cards.  There were six player who got more than one red card.  Wes Brown got 3 (at least one was pretty harsh).  Two reds were dished out to Kevin Nolan, Chico Flores, Younes Kaboul, Allan MacGregor, and Nemanja Vidic.  This is the first of two posts that examines how much these cards might have cost their teams.

The graph below shows no clear relationship between league position and red card count, e.g. top 5 got 10 whereas bottom 5 got only 8 cards.  Brown's three red cards helps Sunderland to the top of the list.  Newcastle with one fewer cards has the highest number of different players with red cards (6).

However, the above picture does not reveal the cost of getting a red card in terms of goals or points.  We will start by examining games with only one red card.  There were 5 games with two red cards.  Chelsea, Newcastle, Stoke and Sunderland got doubles while Newcastle & Norwich shared two in their game at Carrow Road.

To keep things simple we will focus on games with single red cards.  As a first aproximation to the cost of the single cards, we will look at the goals and win-lose-draw outcome of these games.  It is a first approximation and, ideally, the analysis should be conducted only for that part of the game after the red card was issued - this will be the focus of our second post.  Accepting this limitation, the bar chart below reveals that the team that gets the red card tends to lose that game.  Two-thirds of these games end up with the team that got the red card losing.  The other third is divided between winning and getting a draw.

The away team received 72% of all red cards.  In the games with just one red card then the percentage that goes to the away team drops to 65%.  The table below shows that, when an away team got a single red card then, away teams scored only 21 goals whereas the home teams scored 64 goals.  This is a 3-to-1 ratio.  When the home team got a red card then the away team scored double the number of goals in those games (29 to 13).  On these numbers it seems the cost of a red is relatively high in terms of goals.

This first glance at the cost of a red cards is a very rough approximation.  No account is taken for the stage of the game at which the red card was issued.  Our next post will delve a little deeper on the issue.

(The data is courtsey of Opta.)

By David Butler

Previously I considered findings relating to simulation in association football after a weekend of contentious calls in the Premier League. The evidence suggested that referees are well qualified to judge whether a footballer attempts at simulate a foul. But what about deception in other sports?  A recent paper published in the Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization available here considers the topic of simulation in basketball using data from the Israeli Basketball Super League.

The researchers look at over 500 incidents and follow the classic approach of behavioural economists; they tested to see whether decision making by players and referees relating to simulation was optimal and, if not, they ask why this was not the case and how systematic was this deviation from optimality.

The data collected suggests that deception in professional basketball is quite common and players often fall in an attempt to receive an offensive foul. It is argued however that what is believed to be a common strategy of deceiving to achieve obvious gains can actually have a negative outcome for the team. They researchers suggest that falling players do not realise the cost they are imposing on their team if a foul is not awarded. The idea is also floated that players and team’s incentives structure could be potentially misaligned (i.e. the player having specific bonuses). The authors go on to cite some of the most recent research in the area of honesty and cheating which suggests that individuals have a tendency to cheat for small personal gains but do not engage in large-scale dishonest behaviours.

The research asks an interesting question, which is especially pertinent in light of the findings; why doesn't the team or the coach instruct his players to stop simulating fouls if there are high costs imposed on the team?  Perhaps the 32 managers on their way to Brazil should turn to the Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization to get the edge! 

By Paul O'Sullivan

Perusing last Wednesday’s Irish Times, I was intrigued by an article entitled ‘IRFU address issue of number of youths dropping out of the sport’. The exit of young people from a given sport at certain life-stages has been an on-going issue for many sports, particularly team  sports. This issue was recently addressed in an ESRI paper by Pete Lunn, Elish Kelly and Nick Fitzpatrick entitled Keeping them in the Game (John Considine previously discussed aspects of this report here and here). Unfortunately, besides noting that the IRFU was engaging with the ESRI about its findings, the Irish Times article gave little indication as  to how the IRFU was going to address the problem and instead devoted much space to an overview of the findings of the ESRI report.

The ESRI report notes that the major participation drop-off points coincide with kids leaving primary school and at the ages of 18 and 21-22, which roughly coincide with leaving second and third-level education, respectively. It is the first drop-off point that I wish to address in this post.

The ESRI report gives various reasons as to why a drop-off in participation may occur at this life-stage. For example, increased time constraints as a result of entering secondary education, different friends, financial cost to parents, etc. The report notes that the drop-off is higher for team sports, both extra-curricular and extra-school, and is also larger for males. When socioeconomic factors are taken into account, the drop-off tends to be greater for lower socio-economic groups, except for extra-school team sports when the proportional drop-off is almost identical across groups.

With regard to the fall-off in team sports, one issue that may be a contributory factor is the movement to ‘competitive’ games that often occurs at age groups consistent with leaving primary school. Over the last number of years, the GAA, FAI and IRFU have modified their ‘non-competitive’ games for very young players in order to build up to ‘full’ games over a number of playing seasons. Emphasis, officially, is on enjoyment and skill-accumulation and all players must receive either equal or a minimum, and sometimes a maximum, amount of playing time. Once these sports move to ‘competitive’ level, however, many players that, up to then, were participating regularly, may now find themselves ‘on the bench’or under increasing pressure to perform to a level above their ability. Also, in many towns and villages, once games become full-sided, the local team may be in the position of having too many players for one team but not enough for two teams, or having to amalgamate age groups. When the objective of the club/manager is winning the next game, a number of players can be prevented from continuing to play regularly.

While it is not clear what the IRFU will do to address this problem, the GAA decided a number of years ago to extend its non-competitive ‘Go-Games’ format to matches up to and including under-12 level. Here, all players must play at least half of any game. The rationale was to reduce the drop-off in participation by allowing players more time to develop skills and so be more likely to continue playing when ‘competitive’ matches were introduced. As last year’s u12 cohort was the first that were subject to this new policy, it is much too early to determine the effect of this policy change.

While the GAA’s motive is laudable, it will be interesting to see if the new policy makes a difference. It is to be hoped that the new policy encourages more players to play for longer and improve their skills as a result of this change. On the other hand, while some kids may now continue playing beyond the current ‘drop-off’ point, the effect may be to simply push the problem back by two years. Kids that would previously have stopped playing soon after entering under-12 level may now postpone this decision until they reach under-14 level, as they continue to get playing time for a longer period. If the latter occurs, then the new policy may have a negative impact on ‘better’ players. For players without a major interest in a sport, and who do not engage in as much ‘effort’as other players, there is an incentive to continue playing as they are guaranteed playing time. As a consequence, more ‘advanced’ players may find themselves with less playing time, as a player with less interest in improving their talent must be allowed to
play. In this instance, the new policy may be counter-productive.

While there may be no ideal solution to this problem, it will be interesting to see how the IRFU proceeds.

By David Butler

Some week’s back the BBC did a provocative feature that I'm sure would be a trip down memory lane for many. The article documents adult males’ fascination with collecting football stickers as children and recounts the days when building albums of mug shots was your greatest concern.

Myself and my brothers were avid collectors as children and I was fortunate enough to complete the 95/96' and 97/98' Premier League Panini/Merlin editions at the tender age of 9.(I don't think I will ever forget the feeling of desolation tirelessly searching for the Middlesbrough defender Steve Vickers for over 3 months to complete the 96' edition).  

Looking back, the playground really becomes a laboratory for thinking about ‘intuitive economics’, as children as young as 5 and 6 get one of their first experiences of autonomous market transactions (as a watchful parent is nowhere to be seen). It is probably one of the first arenas where our independent economic socialisation begins.  Previous research (linked below) suggests that swapping seems most popular during middle childhood, between the ages of 8-10 and generally takes place at school. By approximately 12 years of age children show a tendancy to 'grow out' of swapping.

Anyone familiar with the process of collecting stickers will understand how you build a bank of 'swaps', essentially duplicate stickers to exchange for players you need. While it’s been quite a while since I was in primary school, I’m sure the lunch time break still gives kids that window of opportunity to get the necessary deals done, exchanging their swaps in an effort to have the prestigious title of finishing the collection first.  

Looking back on my own experience it surprises me how young children have such a strong intuition for many econ 101 concepts. Whats more, a marketplace for stickers naturally comes about, devising its own specific prices and norms along the way. Children learn that scarce resources that are in demand come with a higher price quite quickly as rarer ‘shiny’ stickers with glitter surrounding a clubs crest or star player have a different exchange rate and only trade for a higher price of 2 or more ‘normal’ stickers depending on demand.

The rarest sticker was, of course, ‘number 1’ the premiership logo, that was in greatest demand and held the highest
price.  If one was lucky enough to get a duplicate/swap ‘number 1’ sticker at an early stage of the season they were
almost granted monopoly rights and could sell it for an extremely high swapping prices (I have a faint memory of one child trading what must have been over 100 stickers for 'number 1').  As the days went on however more duplicate ‘number ones’ would enter the market and the price to trade for the illusive Premier League crest,would fall.

Equally from recollection the playground market for stickers as time passed got close to a perfect one.  Information on product quality was fully observable and could easily be checked, and information would disseminate quickly as to who had what swaps on offer and who needed what stickers. Little scope for arbitrage existed and the law of one playground price ruled near the end of the season.

I hope all those like me will enjoy the nostalgia in the BBC article and the thought that we may have been acting like an economic agent of our textbooks even before we knew it. In truth  the economics of swapping stickers reminds me of how many interactions can take on an economic form but essentially have a social function.

There is a reasonably large literature on the relationship children have with economic concepts but for specifics the 1996 article by Paul Webley,  Playing the market: The autonomous economic world of children gives a good overview of the economics of childhood swapping. For those with a passion for Gaelic Games, John Considine provides some more nostalgia here, recalling the experience of  buying his first hurley.

By Ed Valentine

Track position was everything at the Catalonia circuit as Hamilton crossed the line 0.6 of a second ahead of his team mate and rival Nico Rosberg to take the chequered flag. Strategy was crucial and was the deciding factor in what was a closely fought battle over the 66 laps. Each of the Mercedes pair traded tenths of a second through every sector of the Grand Prix. Blow for blow like heavyweight titans waiting for the moment to land the knock out punch it was part bare knuckle fight part chess match in an arena of game theory that John Von Neumann would have been proud of.

This was an excellent example of how economics is played out in Formula 1 as Nico opted to change strategy midway through the race and run the harder tyre for the second stint rather than the third. This was an attempt to get the slower (hard) tyre out of the way only to get the optimum benefit from the medium (and slightly faster) compound for the final stint with a lighter fuel weighted car. Why did he decide to do this and not follow Hamilton’s strategy? Nico had to do something different as Hamilton was 3.7 seconds up the road heading into the first round of stops. Perhaps the German realised that he could get quicker times on the medium tyre in the third stint than Hamilton could get in the second due to having a lighter car (as the fuel depleted). Rosberg’s plan worked as he managed to pump in faster laps on his 2nd medium tyre phase than Hamilton did.

So if this was the case how did Nico Rosberg not manage to pass Lewis Hamilton? 

The crucial and race deciding phase occurred between laps 44 and 46 with the second round of pit stops. When Hamiltonpitted for the second time he came out 19.6 seconds behind his team mate. Time lost in the pits is about 21 – 22 seconds so Rosberg would have needed to have built a further 2 – 3 seconds during those extra two laps in order to come out in front. Instead he lost a total of 2.2 seconds during this cross over phase and would have needed to over take Hamiltonon the road in order to win. He didn’t manage it as he just couldn’t erode the deficit quickly enough – he ran out of laps

Looking back Rosberg will kick himself as it’s obvious he stayed out for one lap too long. He couldn’t have pitted on lap 44 because that’s when Hamilton did so by stopping on lap 45 he would not have lost the 1.158 seconds on lap 46. What adds insult to injury is that as soon as Rosberg got the fresher tyres he was .3 of a second quicker than Hamilton. The German needed this .3 of a second one lap earlier instead of losing 1.158s. This was where the Spanish GP of 2014 was won and lost.

The F1 party rolls in to Monaco in two weeks time as a 1000 of Formula 1’s new best friends will descend on the paddock to gorge in the glamour. It’s a circuit where overtaking is impossible so strategy will be more key than at any other race in the calendar. It will be a race between the Mercedes pair but the winner will be largely a function of who has best studied their economics during the fortnight break.

By Eoin Whyte

The ‘Rooney rule’ was adopted in 2003 and established a set of guidelines for all NFL teams in their selection process for head coaching and senior football operation jobs. Under the new rules all NFL teams are now required to interview people considered to be of an ethnic minority when making an appointment for any of the sport’s top coaching positions. The rule has made a significant impact on the number of African American head coaches in the NFL. In 2002, the year prior to the adoption of the Rooney rule, there were only 2 African American head coaches employed in the NFL. Four years later this number had increased to 7. 

Madden and Ruther (2011) argues that this increase illustrates that there had been discriminatory influences in the previous selection process of new coaches in the NFL. According to Madden & Ruther, discrimination occurs “when the marginal or last African American coach hired must be better than the marginal white coach”. Table 1 below, from Madden & Ruther (2011), details how, prior to introduction of the Rooney Rule, there was a significant discrepancy in the number of African American coaches to white coaches in the NFL. The table also highlights how, prior to the rule, African American coaches enjoyed a significantly higher win rate averaging 9.1 wins a season versus 8.0 of their white counterparts. Sixty-nine percent of African American coaches got their respective teams to the play offs versus thirty-nine percent of all other coaches. Since the Rooney rule however, these discrepancies has evened out and the win rate of African American coaches has decreased.

The Madden & Ruther paper comes to mind when examining the Irish data for International Carding Scheme funding between 2008 and 2014.  It is interesting to note that there are  discrepancies in the funding between males and females in Athletics, Boxing, Cycling and Swimming, what I label the ABC’s of Irish sports.

The first chart below highlights that more male athletes have received funding than their female counterparts in all of their respective sports under ICS funding between the  discussed years. 65 males were funded in Irish athletics versus 64 female athletes. 79 male boxers were funded versus the mere 3 female recipients. 42 male cyclists were funded as opposed to the 10 female counterparts. And 36 male swimmers were granted funding in comparison to 27 female swimmers.

However on average, female athletes have been granted more funding than their male counterparts. The second chart illustrates how female boxers on average received over 3 times more funding than male boxers. In athletics, on average females enjoy 16% more funding than male athletes. Cycling has a 21% difference in the average funding for male and female athletes in favour of female athletes. While the average funded female swimmer also earns 53% more than the average male swimmer.

Of course is it is easy to recognise these figures being possibly distorted by the success of Irish female athletes such as Taylor (Boxing), Murphy (Swimming), O'Rourke and Loughnane (Athletics), all of whom are amongst the higher funded recipients.

However, these differences still pose some questions.  Akin to the African American coaches’ previous higher success rate in the NFL, do Irish female athletes receive more funding versus their male counterparts only because they have to be exceptional in their respective sport to receive funding in the first place?  Or, are females athletes funded to a higher level in an attempt to encourage more females into sport?  It is hard to say. It requires further investigation.