By Daragh O'Leary

My favourite sports quote of all time is “the more I practice, the luckier I get”. It was made by South African golfer Gary Player. The quote is brilliant because it sheds light on a much debated topic within sports, the talent vs development debate. The talent side of the debate states that great sportspeople are born with a predisposition towards being good at their sport. The development side subscribe to the view that “great players are made and not born”. The debate tends to polarise people to one side of the fence or the other.

On one hand there are exceptional sportspeople who may be considered “late bloomers” and take longer to develop than others (Jamie Vardy). However, there also seems to be people who were destined for greatness at a very young age (Kylian Mbappé). To try and see which side of the debate is correct I took a look at 18 players from Manchester City’s squad that played Burnley two weeks ago and took note of the age where they first received their international cap, be it at underage or senior level.

Here, receiving an international cap is a proxy for talent being recognised as to receive one you have to be viewed as one of the best, if not the best in your country. The idea here is that if natural talent exists, it should be prevalent and easily observable in the majority of cases from a very young age. Or in other words, if natural talent is the reason people go on to play international football at senior level, then they should have been playing at international level from the year they were eligible to do so. However, this doesn’t seem to be the case in the data.

 If we look at splitting the players into two groups, children (U18) and adults (18 or over) then it’s a 50:50 split. Some player’s talents are recognised from a very young age, David Silva at 15 for example. Whereas some players don’t fully blossom until later into their career, Riyad Mahrez at 23 for example. While it’s nice to see the dispersion of ages at which players made their first international appearance, the findings aren’t conclusive enough to prove which side of the debate is correct.

Half the sample received international caps at a young age, indicating they may have had a natural predisposition toward being good footballers; but the other half were adults by the time they finally received their first international cap, indicating they may be the product of development and practice.

So, is it the case that these “late bloomers” are people who had a natural talent and it layed dormant within them during their childhood? Or is it the case that we perceive people who are good at something at a young age as naturally talented because that’s the most readily available information to us and we just haven’t seen the endless hours they’ve put in in training? This is definitely an area where more research could provide valuable insight.

By John Considine

It is easy to find a variety of Vince Lombardi quotes where the man states that there is a price to be paid for anything worthwhile.  While sportspeople may occasionally forget this sentiment, those involved in sport at any serious level agree with Lombardi.  Those who play Gaelic games are no different.  This can be confirmed by a reading of a recent Economic & Social Research Institute report written by Elish Kelly and colleagues.

The report is titled Playing Senior Inter-County Gaelic Games: Experiences, Realities and Consequences and it presents a huge volume of data on the self-reported experiences of the players.*  Probably my favourite picture in the report is Figure 6.26 (reproduced below).  Allowing for all sorts of potential biases in the responses, it is a pretty impressive endorsement of the experience.  Much of the report detailed the demands on these amateur players but the bottom line was that virtually all respondents agreed with the statement "I am glad I made the choice to play inter-county".

Looking at some of the other responses, it would seem that the price paid was primarily in terms of forgone income.  Figure 6.30 of the report shows that the single biggest reasons for ceasing to play inter-county was to "Focus on Professional Career" (47.6%).  The same percentage (47.6%) said that the area they would like to spend more time on was their Professional Career (Figure 6.20).

The beauty of Figure 6.26 is that it gets to the essence of the issue.  Admittedly, it is being asked after the decision.  However, as Professor Eamon O'Shea said at the launch of the report, there is a revealed preference issue here.  The guys chose to play.  They were prepared to pay the price.

Of course, sportspeople are prepared to haggle about the price (or other elements).  Those who play Gaelic Games successfully lobbied for government funding in the form of grants to players.  I have encountered a few students, from various sports, who initially seek special treatment because of the impact of the sporting endeavours on their academic performance.  (They could do with remembering that Lombardi's words have wider significance - whether it is sporting or academic achievement, "you've got to pay the price".)

The value of the report is that there are concerns about the price paid by inter-county players.  It is important that playing inter-county remains within the price range of most.

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[* I was a member of the Oversight Committee for the Report.]

By David Butler

RTE covered an interesting story yesterday of research by scientists at TCD and UCD looking at the genetic structure behind the speed of a race horse. The news story can be read here. As it suggests this would offer valuable information to breeders and trainers, who have to decide the optimum distance for a thoroughbred.

My take on the science is that the researchers have located, at a genetic level, what regulates the production of myostatin protein – this proteins affects horse muscle and thus their ability to run alternative distances.  

I am by no means an expert on horse biology and I am left wondering to what extent is this a heritable trait? I’d be surprised if this wasn’t discovered and accounted for by breeders and trainers already through the trial and error of the breeding process (at a non-genetic level). Surely they have learned of a horse’s raw ability early on in the training process? It would be interesting to measure how far off the judgments of trainers would be compared to the scientific recommendations.

Heritable traits do act as important indicators to buyers as seen through hammer prices, but how much of thoroughbred’s performance is attributed to genetic lineage is highly debatable. The Irish Horseracing body publicly discloses this uncertainty to potential buyers, suggesting that the attribution to genetics can even be as low as 9%. Lineage seems to offer a loose guide.

If it was possible to identify a ‘speed gene’ when thoroughbreds were only foals or yearlings, what would the implications be? My guess is that balance within races may be affected - more information could increase the precision of trainers’ judgment regarding the ideal distance for a horse. Also sale and hammer prices could be influenced if buyers seek out this information in veterinary reports. For instance, knowing that your potential purchase will be stayer may limit the selection of races relevant for the animal, the associated prize money and hence your estimate of the thoroughbred's value.

My skepticism is always raised when I hear any claim identifying an ‘x/y/z gene’ but it will interesting to see how this develops. In some ways the uncertainty associated with the breeding process and the genetic ambiguity creates lots of the drama – this reminds me of the Ned Flanders quote from the Simpsons episode Lisa the Skeptic when he claims that “science is like a blabbermouth who ruins the movie by telling you how it ends. Well, I say there are some things we don't want to know. Important things.”

Knowing these things about horses are clearly important but despite scientific advances genetics is only part of the story and I don’t think we will be able to ever know “how the movie ends” - environmental factors such as course, weather, going, jockey, training, the role of other horses will probably always keep the drama in place.

By Robbie Butler

In 1988 Calgary hosted the Winter Olympics. The Canadian city overcame competition from Falun in Sweden and the northern Italian town of Cortina for the right to host the games. Some thirty years later, Calgary once again wants to host the Games. This time it must overcome obstacles at the home, the most obvious being the local taxpayer.

In order for the bid by Calgary to continue, local taxpayers are going to the polls next week in order to decide if some $2.8 billion dollars of public money should be used to fund the Games.

Canadians are better placed that most when it comes to such questions. The 1976 Summer Games in Montreal  is a classic example of a spending overrun. The Olympic Stadium cost more than 5 and a half times the original estimate and ended up with an outlay of around $1.4 billion. The legacy of this meant that Canadian's were still incurring the financing cost of the stadium until 2006. Somebody born in 1977 (the year after the Games), assuming they began paying taxes at 18 years of age, contributed for 11 years for a Games that haven't occurred in their lifetime. 

This time around it is somewhat different, and locals will get the chance to decide whether they should continue with the bid. It is interesting to note that in recent years Olso, Kraków, Lviv, Stockholm, Graz, Sapporo and Sion have all withdrawn Winter Olympic bids. Stockholm, having withdrawn from the 2020 race will also vote on a bid for 2026. Quite aptly for Calgary, Cortina has also expressed an interest in bidding, and like the Swedes and Canadians', will put the bid to a public vote.

It will be very interesting to see the outcome of next week's vote in Calgary. Should the vote pass, and the city be selected by the International Olympic Committee (IOC) as the preferred host, many things will happen. Hosting the Games will bring a sense of pride and civic engagement. Many locals will be excited in the lead up to the event, and the hosting of the Games themselves may cause the general mood to heighten further. One thing that won't happen -the taxpayer in Calgary will not make money from the event. 

By Sean O'Connor

This Sunday sees two of Ireland’s most talented teams do battle at the Aviva Stadium for the Irish Daily Mail FAI Cup. Sunday will mark the sides 4th consecutive time meeting, with Cork City currently edging on Cups collected having bested Dundalk for the last two years.

The competition has been contested 97 times since the first final was played between St. James’s Gate and Shamrock Rovers in the 1921-22 which James’s Gate won in a replay in Dalymount Park. Counting replays a total of 122 matches have been played with total goals scored of 176 (1.4 goals per game). In terms of attendance, a total of 2,314,080 individuals have attended the various games (18,968 per game). These include venues such as Dalymount Park, Tolka Park, Lansdowne Road, the RDS, Tallaght Stadium and, most recently, eight final in the revamped Aviva Stadium.

The figure below plots the attendances at these eight finals. As can be seen there was been a large fall in attendance from the 1st Final in the Aviva Stadium (2010) to the 2nd. The can be explained by the presence of Shamrock Rovers in the 2010 Final, the Dublin club's first since 2002.

Attendance from 2011 to 2017 has been relatively stable. The red line on the figure below indicated the previous three finals between Cork City and Dundalk. It’ll be interesting to see if this trend continues on Sunday.

By John Considine

Austerity in the UK is coming to an end.  At least that is what the UK Chancellor of the Exchequer told those listening to his Budget Speech.  It has probably ended in Ireland a few years ago (although you will find a few rare birds who claim there was no austerity, a few more who will claim it remains, and one or two others who will insist the term is meaningless).  If one is to judge by non-capital Exchequer expenditure on sport then the "recovery" has been in progress since about 2013.  Since 2012 non-capital sports expenditure has increased marginally as a proportion of overall non-capital expenditure.

Examining the period since 2012 also allows us to assess the period of Fine Gael led administrations.  The distribution of Exchequer sports expenditure by line item (Vote 31) is illustrated in the pie chart below.

The Exchequer expenditure on Sport Ireland accounts for just under 60% of the total for the period 2012-18.  (Broadly speaking one could add the Dormant Account Funding to this figure as this funding shows up in the accounts of Sport Ireland.)  The vast majority of expenditure on Sport Ireland is classified as non-capital.  Turning to the how Sport Ireland uses this money, we see that the biggest item of expenditure in the Sport Ireland accounts is the grants.  Effectively, the government outsources the task of managing this non-capital expenditure to Sport Ireland.  A screen shot of some of the relevant grants is provided below (these are from the latest Annual Accounts on the Sport Ireland website).

Outside of pay, the remaining items in the pie chart are capital grants administered by the Department of Transport, Tourism and Sport.  The political bias in these allocations has provided the basis for plenty of discussion in a variety of places (including on this blog, e.g. here).  By their nature, capital grants allow the decision maker greater influence.  It also opens up the opportunity for credit-claiming.  This is more difficult for non-capital grants.  As the screenshot above shows, non-capital grants are reoccurring and changes are usually incremental.  Less room for credit-claiming.

By John Eakins

The new NBA basketball season has just started with the main headline attraction being the move of LeBron James from the Cleveland Cavaliers to the LA Lakers and whether he will revive the once famed basketball franchise. While his move is likely to generate more interest and higher TV viewing figures, this hasn’t stopped the NBA experimenting with a new revenue generating streaming model.

As reported here, here and here, the NBA is giving the option to fans to stream the final quarter of any game for a nominal once off fee – reported to be $1.99 in most of the stories above. From my reading, the option only appears once the 3rd quarter buzzer sounds rather than purchasing it before the match starts. It also appears to be just a streaming option at the moment (rather than purchasing it through your TV operator) and is appealing primarily to digital users which, as some of articles state above, is a growing market for basketball fans, especially younger ones. Interestingly, the articles also suggest that NBA are also looking at some stage in the future to allow fans purchase the live stream of a match at the start of any quarter with different prices points attached. A great example of price differentiation by a monopolist if there was ever one.

It will be interesting to see whether this is successful or not. In some ways it’s a no-brainer for the NBA. The actual costs of implementing such a feature are probably small – the fact that they stream the full game already would suggest that it should be quite easy to introduce a separate final quarter streaming service. In economics talk, the marginal revenue of such a service would outweigh the marginal cost. Basketball is also a game which suits such a new revenue strategy given that it’s divided into four quarters and in most games the outcome is still up for grabs coming into the final quarter. It also appeals to the behavioural concept of instant gratification, which some of my colleagues on this blog have written about before. Why waste time watching the whole match when you can catch the shorter and potentially more important part for a cheaper price. I have to admit, when watching recorded American Football highlights (another sport that this revenue model could be applied to), I myself sometimes forward to the final quarter.

Could this model be applied to other sports? One could offer to purchase the 2nd half of football matches or rugby matches, the last 10 overs of a cricket match, the last round of a golf major, the last 2 games in a tennis set or perhaps just purchase the tiebreaker if there is one. The options would appear to be endless and given how streaming is becoming more prevalent as a means of broadcasting sports events, I wouldn’t be surprised if there were more examples of this offered in other sports in the near future. However I can’t see it replace the traditional TV viewing experience just yet. There is still something appealing in watching how a match unfolds from start to finish from the comfort of your armchair on a big television screen.

By David Butler

After a long season many League of Ireland fans deserve a pat on the back for following their club the length and breadth of the country.  In my opinion, away trips are a far different experience from attending a home match and although the chances of a loss go up, nothing seems better than a win on the road in front of a big home crowd.
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Travelling to away games is a commitment and carries costs in terms of money and time. Some fans may think they have it harder than others so the chart below shows the total kilometres travelled by a fan who went to all away fixtures in this year’s LOI as measured from each clubs home stadium to the visiting ground. The numbers are only one-way, so in reality you can double the totals!

Unsurprisingly, the Derry City fans have to travel the farthest. To put their 5,228 kilometres in perspective, that would be about the same as leaving the Brandywell and travelling to Georgia (Tblisi is 5055km away according to Google Maps). Cork City fans have the equivalent total distance to cover as a one-way trip to Ankara, Turkey. Waterford fans have the third longest distance to travel. Their total travel over the season would equate to leaving the RSC and heading to Moscow.

One the opposite end, fans of Dublin clubs can take advantage of the fact that many rivals are on their doorstep. Rovers, Pats and Bohs have each other all nearby and have short trips to the north and south for Dundalk and Bray respectively.

In some sense it’s good that there significant travel distances – this is a sign that the spatial structure of the league is balanced. A concern for many small leagues, and something we suffered from in the past, was the emergence of a ‘tramway league’. At the moment having Derry, Sligo, Waterford, Cork and Limerick present is a good thing for the league. Perhaps all that is missing to have a strong regional-capital balance is a competitive team based in Galway. 

By Robbie Butler

The United States Grand Prix was held yesterday. Many had anticipated a Lewis Hamilton victory which would have secured the British drivers' 5th Formula One World Drivers' Championship (WDC). This was not to be as Ferrari's Kimi Räikkönen finished in first place, with Hamilton nearly three seconds behind in 3rd place.

Regardless of Ferrari's success, this has delayed the inevitable, and with Hamilton 70 points ahead in the race for the WDC, he is likely to be crowned next weekend in Mexico City. Success for Hamilton will mean his 4th title in five years, and represent a five-in-a-row for Mercedes in the World Constructors' Championship (WCC).

Such dominance is nothing new to Formula One. Since 2000 just eight men have won the WDC. Including the 2018 Championship, and assuming Hamilton wins the title, it will mean three drivers (Hamilton, Vettel and Schumacher) will have won 14 of the past 19 WDC. 

The WCC is even more concentrated. Again since 2000, just six teams have won this title, and 15 of the 19 are shared by three constructors (Ferrari (6), Red Bull (4) and Mercedes (5 including this year). 

Whether this is good for the sport is an open question.

In 2010, rule changes were implemented into the scoring. Although the sport has a long history of altering the scoring system, there was a radical move to award the winner of each race 25 points. This had traditionally been 10 points or less. It could be argued that this rule change has reduced competitive balance.

Is this the case? I don't believe so. The figure above presents one measure of competitive balance, a concentration ratio, of the top two drivers in the WDC standing each year since 2005. It is hard to argue that rule changes to the scoring system in 2010 are responsibility for a reduction in competition. The sport was at its most competitive (since 2005) the year before the rule change, three of the seasons that followed have been less concentrated than the WDC's in 2005, 2006 and 2007. 

The trend is suggesting a movement away from more competitive races but this may not be a consequence of the points scoring changes. The new owners may want to consider the level of competitive balance. Sports fans generally start to become disinterested in events that become noncompetitive. However, the answer to this problem might require more than just changing the points scoring within races. 

By John Considine

Michael Lewis has written his fair share of popular books that have economic themes.  The Undoing Project: A Friendship that Changed Our Minds seems to suggest that we got a bit carried away with the potential for late 20th century economics.  One could possibly say the same about his perspective on financial markets in his earlier book The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine.  But what about Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game?  I've read the book and seen the movie but I was never sure about it's verdict on economics.

While someone with a degree in economics might have helped the Oakland A's, the underlying message was surely not that different to The Undoing Project or The Big Short.  Individual decisions, and the outcome of the decisions of many individuals, is not always perfect or efficient.  If the player market was perfect then Billy Beane would not have been able to identify undervalued players.

In Moneyball we were presented with scouts who were blinded by the ways they had traditionally rated players, e.g. great wheels.  It is not dissimilar to the theory-induced-blindness of "mainstream" economists in The Undoing Project.  As I say, I'm not sure about the perspective on economics presented in Moneyball.  There is a scene towards the end of the movie where Billy Beane (Brad Pitt) says his draft experience taught him never to make decisions based on money.  Maybe Michael Lewis was never a fan of the discipline.  Maybe the friendship between Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman was not needed to change his mind.

Moneyball did draw attention to the use of data and statistics.  Scientists of all persuasions would surely approve.  Plenty of other books on the use of data and statistics followed.  A few have been reviewed on this blog.  The Numbers Game is one of my favourites.  It includes a lovely discussion on the Maldini principle.  The Maldini principle is the sporting equivalent of the dog that did not bark in the night (on second thoughts I'm not sure about this as the original Conan Doyle story concerned a sporting event).  In short it refers to the fact that Paolo Maldini's "numbers" did not fully reflect his defensive play.  It is a warning that statistics can only capture so much.

Younger followers of football may not remember, or have even heard about, Paolo Maldini.  They will know Romelu Lukaku.  The Manchester United and Belgium striker has racked up an impressive array of statistics.  He is among the youngest to score 50 and 100 Premier League goals.  On the international scene he has outdone Messi and Ronaldo when it comes to early career goals.  Of course, there are those who will question the quality of the opposition.  These critics would do well to remember that there is also attacking contributions that basic count statistics do not capture.  The third goal scored by Belgium against Japan in the 2018 World Cup is a case in point.

With time almost up, the score was 2-2 and Japan had a corner kick.  The Belgium goalkeeper catches the corner kick.  Twelve second later Belgium are 3-2 ahead.  Lukaku play a huge role in the goal by (i) making a run to create space for a team mate and (ii) by stepping over the ball (see the goal here).  These contributions are not always measured.

Back to Michael Lewis and Moneyball. The book plays an important role in reminding us of the importance of an empirical approach to sport and economics. There is also a little bit of satisfaction in seeing the scouts and other insiders getting a little egg on their face. But it would be wrong to throw the baby out with the bathwater.  Experience at the coalface is invaluable. One can appreciate Moneyball and also appreciate more qualitative evidence. My knowledge of baseball is extremely limited but it is impossible to read baseball books by journalists like Leonard Koppett or participants like Tony La Russa without realising that understanding the game requires more than a degree in economics or statistics.