By John Considine

In late January, a game between Chelsea and Liverpool in the Women's Super League was abandoned after six minutes.  The decision to play the game on a frozen pitch seemed strange.  The various media outlet had a field day discussing the issue, e.g. here is Sky Sports' "The Football Show" discussing the issue.  There was growing support for the idea that WSL grounds needed undersoil heating.  Some of the contributions to the debate would have been at home in Trekonomics: The Economics of Star Trek.

In Trekonomics Manu Saadia discusses the difference between the virtual world of the space ship's holodeck and the real world.  Scarcity and trade-offs do not feature prominently in the holodeck.  You can build your own world.  Perfect grounds.  Perfect weather.  That is not the world faced by the WSL.  It is not even the world faced by the Premier League.  Resources are scarce.  A more consider view of the situation came from the Arsenal manager.  Jonas Eidevall said "We need to take good decisions on where the investment should be going to grow the game in the long term and I'm very doubtful that should be put into undersoil heating at the moment".  There are plenty of needs/wants and limited resources.  It is important that they are put to best use.

By Daragh O'Leary

Diversification is a topic which is brought up frequently in economics. Investors often advocate diversifying portfolios to protect themselves against shocks to certain industries. Put more simply, this means it’s wise not to put all your eggs in one basket. Last weekend, I found myself wondering was this a mistake that Pep Guardiola has made.
 
Manchester City have acquired probably the best out-and-out centre forward in the world. Maybe Erling Haaland hasn’t got the most well-rounded game in terms of dribbling and skill, but he is undeniably a phenomenal goal scorer. The Norwegian now has 25 Premier League goals after just 19 appearances. Meaning he is averaging 1.32 goals a game and quite good at football. Despite this amazing stat, Man City are worse off this year than they were last year.
 
After 20 matches last year Guardiola’s men sat at the top of the table with 50 points. This year after the same number of matches they find themselves in 2nd place with just 45 points. Meaning they are 5 points behind the league leaders Arsenal who have played a game less.
 
How have they managed that?
 
As a boyhood Arsenal fan, I would love to think this is all because of Mikel Arteta and Arsenal. However, considering Arsenal are yet to play Manchester City this can hardly be the case. I think the answer could be the transition of Man City from a team with a lot of goal scorers, to a team with one player who can score a lot of goals. The below graph illustrates the latter.

Haaland has scored just over 47% of Manchester City’s 53 Premier League goals. That’s nearly every second one. Their second highest scorer is Phil Foden with just 7 goals (13.21%). An issue which arises with such an over-reliance on one player is that if he gets injured or goes through a bad patch of form, nearly half of your goals are gone. Additionally, there has been games this season where Haaland has played and scored, but not scored enough to win the game. City’s draws to Everton and Villa are good examples of this. In years gone by, I don’t think this would have been an issue for Man City.
 
During the 2017/18 season Pep’s men became the first ever Premier League centurions. They managed to accumulate 100 points in one season. That season Manchester City’s highest scorer finished 11 goals behind the Golden Boot winner. The reason this didn’t matter was because 4 different players for City all scored 10 goals or more. If an opponent could stop Aguero, then Sterling, Jesus and Sane could step in. This doesn’t seem to be the case for Man City anymore.
 
Furthermore, a different club have now adopted this strategy to great success. Arsenal are currently top of the Premier League and have the second most goals in the competition (45). Amazingly, none of their players have scored more than 8 goals. This is one of the key reasons the Gunners have coped so well with the injury to Gabriel Jesus. He is responsible for just over 11% of their total goal tally. Take him out of the team and Saka, Martinelli, Ødegaard and Nketia are all still there. The graph below illustrates this.

A telling difference between this graph and the previous one is the proportion of goals which fall into the ‘other’ category. These are goals scored by the remainder of the squad who aren’t their top 4 goal scorers. None of Arsenal’s top scorers have even half the goal tally of the rest of the squad (18). Whereas Haaland has significantly outscored the goal tally of the rest of Man City’s squad.  
 
What’s more is that Arsenal’s group orientated approach to goal scoring provides the team with multiple outlets when playing. Whereas at Man City every player that isn’t Erling Haaland seems to have one job, assist Erling Haaland. The halfway mark in this Premier League season seems to demonstrate that you don’t necessarily need to have the best players to be top of the league. All you need is for your team to be greater than the sum of its parts.

By Robbie Butler
 
The 14th European Sport Economics Association (ESEA) Conference will be held at University College Cork, Ireland from the 23rd to the 25th of August 2023.

We are delighted to announce the event will include a keynote address by Professor Jane Ruseski (John Chambers College of Business and Economics) of West Virginia University. 

Professor Ruseski is an economist of international standing and will be the first female keynote speaker at the conference. 

Aside for sports economics, Prof. Ruseski has research interests in health economics, health financing and policy,  and industrial organization. She has published in a list of prestigious international peer-reviewed academic journals including Contemporary Economic Policy, Health Economics, Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics, Southern Economic Journal, BE Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy, and Journal of Sports Economics. She is a co-editor of Contemporary Economic Policy and an associate editor of the International Journal of Sport Finance.

Those wishing to attend the conference should know that submissions are welcome relating to any area of sports economics including theoretical, empirical and conceptual papers. Please submit an extended abstract including introduction, theoretical background, methods and major finding via the submission portal that can be found on the conference website: www.cubsucc.com/esea-call-for-papers.

Abstract submission deadline: 31st March 2023.
Notification of acceptance: 30th April 2023

Full information about Cork 2023 can be found on the event website: www.cubsucc.com/esea-home/

The 14th European Sport Economics Association (ESEA) Conference will be held at University College Cork, Ireland from the 23rd to the 25th of August 2023.

The ESEA Conference is the annual gathering of the European Sport Economics Association. This is a scientific association founded in 2010 that pursues the goal of promoting communications between scientists and practitioners working in the field of sports economics.

The conference is a three-day event hosted by the Centre for Sports Economics and Law (CSEL) at UCC and will take place on the main campus. Prior to the event, a PhD student workshop will take place from the 21st of August to the morning of the 23rd. This will be delivered by international scholars in sports economics. The Conference Gala Dinner will be held on the Thursday evening, 24th August.

Submissions are welcome relating to any area of sports economics including theoretical, empirical and conceptual papers. Please submit an extended abstract including introduction, theoretical background, methods and major finding via the submission portal that can be found on the conference website: www.cubsucc.com/esea-call-for-papers.

Abstract submission deadline: 31st March 2023.
Notification of acceptance: 30th April 2023

Full information about Cork 2023 can be found on the event website: www.cubsucc.com/esea-home/

If you have any questions in relation to the conference, please feel free to contact a member of the local organising committee.

Local Organising Committee: Dr David Butler (CSEL, UCC), Dr Robert Butler (CSEL, UCC), Pat Massey (Compecon)

Our blog will now take its customary Christmas break and return on Monday the 30th of January 2023.

We would like to wish all our readers a very Happy Christmas and best wishes for 2023.

By John Considine

A couple of months ago I was in communication with colleagues about the changing stance of an inter-county free-taker.  The player has one of the more successful conversion rates in 2022.  The communication quickly turned to the difficult in making comparisons with limited amounts of data.  It can be difficult to account for all the possible explanations for variations in outcomes (and that is without dealing with the fact that the players themselves change).  Bigger data may not solve the problem and there can be value in "small" data.  Consider the following picture of the conversion rate for frees (penalised fouls) in the 34 games of the 2022 championship.

The standout observation is that the lowest conversion rates came on All-Ireland quarter-final day.  Two games on the same day, at the same venue, separated by a couple of hours.  The weather conditions were not perfect but they were not bad.  It is hard to imagine the weather conditions explaining the low conversion rates.

The weather conditions differed dramatically for the games represented by the black bars.  In both cases Limerick and Clare were the teams.  An added complication was the fact that the venue was difference.

I don't have detailed weather data but we can look at the conversion rates by venue and match day.  First, let us look at the conversion rates by venue.  Cusack Park, Ennis is the leftmost venue.

The 2022 championship was played over 17 different dates.  Matchday 17 is the day of the All-Ireland final.  Matchday 14 is the day of the quarter-finals.  The semi-finals were played on the same weekend but on separate days.

This brings us back to the players themselves.  Consider the difficulty in comparing them.  How many shots did they take?  From what location on the field did they strike the free?  What were the weather conditions?  What was the venue?  What was the stage of the competition?  Below is a picture that only adjusts partly for the number of shots taken.  It is for all players who struck more than 10 frees that crossed the opponents endline directly for either a score or a wide.

The four players listed can claim to have the highest conversion rate depending on the cut-off for minimum number.  Alan Murphy nailed 100% of his 10 frees.  If one use a minimum of 20 then it is Noel McGrath.  If one used a minimum of 25 it is Arron Gillane.  Above 30 attempts, it is TJ Reid.

By John Considine

Below are a couple of pictures to illustrate the time that the ball is in play during the 2022 senior hurling championship.  The first picture shows the amount of time for each of the 34 games.  It is presented in declining order of the time that the ball is in-play.  

The ball is in play 40% more time in the leftmost game compared to the rightmost game.  How can we explain this difference?  One thing that stands out is the correlation with the number of frees awarded (-0.62).  The picture below illustrates the situation.

Frees shots eat into playing time.  Even when the free taker is located in close proximity to the foul, they will take between 20 and 30 seconds to go through their free-taking routine.  It will be longer when they have to travel from a distant part of the field.  If it is a shot for a score then the ball is back "in play" for a few seconds before it crosses the endline.  Then there is another 10 to 20 seconds taken up before the goalkeeper puts the ball back into play.  

Despite the title of this blog post, I don't see a shot-clock for free takers (like they have in French rugby union) as a solution.  I don't think there is any obvious way of changing the situation.

By John Considine

Below are some graphics on the in-game competitive balance of the 2022 senior hurling championship.

The first picture shows that for just over 50% of game time the teams are tied or within one score (three points) of each other.  Teams are within two scores, or six points, of each other for 75% of the time.

It is possible to compare the Leinster or Munster championship using a similar picture.  The second picture below shows the points margins for these two championships.

An alternative way of examining the competitiveness of the games is to count the number of times the state of the game changes.  How many times does one or other team lead?  How many times are the teams tied?  Below is a picture that captures this information.  The game on the left is the Munster final (normal time).  Most people think it was the game of the year.  The same two teams also account for the second bar on the left (round-robin Munster game).  One needs to be careful with this picture/measure.  The five games on the right are ones where one team takes a lead and maintains it for the game.  While four of these games were blowouts, one was competitive to the end.

By John Considine

In the aftermath of the Monday Night Football game between the Saints and the Buccaneers, the ProFootballTalk host went further than usual in his questioning of the NFL officials.  Mike Florio wondered if the on-field NFL officials are making decisions to keep the game competitive.  He also suggested that this could be supported by the NFL office and cited comments by the Commissioner.  Florio’s usual position is that he is convinced that games are not fixed, that he has to defend this position against those who claim that “the fix is in”, and that the NFL are not helping by their (lack of) payment of officials.  Tuesday’s broadcast went a little further than usual.
 
He also wrote about the game (here and here).  In the latter he places more emphasis on what the Saints should have done to draw attention to the events.
 
Florio argues a good case.  On the broadcast he produced one image of Tampa Bay’s left tackle, Donovan Smith, performing something like the Heimlich Maneuver.  It was not penalised.  At the time, and for the majority of the game, Tom Brady and his colleagues trailed.  They could only manage 3 points until late in the game despite the protection, of questionable legality, being provided by Smith.  Without the benefit of the officials’ doubts then the game may not have been close coming into the final quarter.  We don't know for sure.
 
While broadly agreeing with Florio, I want to argue that not enough attention is being paid to the Tampa Bay touchdown that was overturned because of a holding foul by Donovan Smith.  With 19 second remaining, Brady threw a touchdown pass to Godwin.  Immediately, the celebrations were muted because of the presence of a flag.  It was as if the officials were trying to ensure that Donovan’s actions would not be decisive.  Unfortunately for them, Tampa Bay found another way.  As a result, the early game decisions cast a longer shadow.
 
While the overturned touchdown also supports Florio’s case, I want to argue that there was a logic to the way the game was called.  There is uncertainty over many calls.  Should officials always call decisions on the balance of probabilities?  It might be worth turning to the law (Florio’s previous career).  A few years before Florio graduated with his law degree, Frank Easterbrook was writing about the cost of errors in the context of antitrust (competition law).  Easterbrook argued that we need to accept that there would be errors in decision but that we should minimise the costs of these errors.  The argument is frequently illustrated by the line “it is better to allow 10 guilty persons go free than sentence one innocent person to the gallows”.  The costs of false positive and false negatives can vary with the dynamics of the game.  It could be argued that the officials called the Smith transgressions when the cost to the Saints was the largest and gave Smith the benefit of the doubt when the cost to the Buccaneers was larger.
 
Yogi Berra is alleged to have said “it is difficult to make predictions, especially about the future”.  We don’t know what would have happened if calls were made differently earlier in the game.  And when it comes to dealing with an uncertain future, I believe that all sports participants would endorse a version of Easterbrook’s cost of errors approach.  We want officials to get the calls correct, but where officials are in doubt then they should err on the side of keeping the game competitive.

By Robbie Butler

Horse racing and other sports that require people or animals to travel from a starting point to a finishing line sometimes end in dead heats. The instances of this are quite small, especially as technology has improved through time, but Wikipedia does have a dedicated page to a "List of dead heat horse races" here. Certainty is provided because everyone knows exactly where the finish line is. Given the sheer volume of racing each year it is a probabilistic certainty that some will end in dead heats. 

Offside in football is different as there is no certainty as to where a line is drawn. This depends on various parameters such as the players themselves, the position of those on the field of play, the ball, etc. Given the ever-gowning number of VAR calls on offside, one can assume with probabilistic certainty, as some point in time a "dead heat" will have to occur. In other words, the exact moment the ball is passed, both the attacker and second last defender are perfectly aligned. 

I have yet to see a VAR offside decision end in dead heat. The lines always fall (at least) slightly apart. Why?

​Maybe it is yet to occur. I doubt it.