By Robbie Butler

Recently the Central Statistics Office (CSO) released results from their sports module of the Household Budget Survey (here). John Considine wrote a short post which presented data on participation in sport and physical exercise (see here). 

I decided to dig a little deeper into the wealth of data that has been made available. I present two bar charts which examine participation in specific sports and physical exercise by gender and by region. Some interesting patterns emerge.

The first considers participation in sport and physical exercise by gender. 13 sporting/exercise categories are identified by the CSO. The participation by gender breakdown is provided below.

As one would probably expect, participation in yoga/pilates and dance categories are dominated by females. For every 97 women that engage in yoga/pilates, just three men do it. Dance is almost as unbalanced, with around 7 participating men for every 92 women. The most balanced sport in terms of participation is athletics with an almost perfect 50:50 split. 

At the other end of the yoga/pilates and dance spectrum lies soccer. This came as a surprise to me. Whilst I never doubted that men play more soccer than women, I was shocked by the size of the imbalance from the CSO figures, with around 4 female soccer players for every 96 males. There are two possible explanations for this. One is that men simply love to play soccer and drive the participation numbers way up. The other is that female soccer is not facilitated as it should be. Lack of teams, competitions and infrastructure may be discouraging/preventing women from playing the sport. This is all the more worrying in light of the wonderful press womens soccer in Ireland has received via Stephaine Roche's wonder strike - voted the second best goal in the world in 2014!.

The second figure illustrates participation in sport and physical exercise by region. Again, the data throws up some interesting findings. 

Aerobics/Gym, Swimming and Cycling make up almost 50% of participation in sport and physical exercise across all eight Irish regions. Soccer is least popular in the West region when compared to percentage participation in the other seven. Gaelic Football is virtually non-existent in the South-East, with just 0.6% of those participating in sport and physical exercise playing the sport. Soccer on the other hand has a disproportionately large playing population in the region (12.3%). This is more than 4% more than its closest rival  (8.2% of the Dublin participating population). 

Hurling and camogie are non-existent in the Border region. The CSO don't even report a figure for participation! The native codes are most popular in the West and Mid-West. Gaelic Football is strongest in the Border region and is also prominent in the Midlands, West and South-West. Golf is strongest in the Mid-East, South-East and Dublin

Finally, a closer look at capital. While not dissimilar to the rest of the country, Dubs do Aerobics/Go to the gym more than any other region. Maybe this is because those in the capital are more health conscience and wish to stay fit more than those living in other regions. Or maybe it is down to access and facilities, and the reason those in Dublin go to the gym more is simply because there are more gyms...

By Robbie Butler

The trouble in Seria A continued last weekend when Parma, a club I would have called my “Italian team”, had to postpone their league match with Udinese as they could not afford to pay for stewarding at the game. Being a child of the 1990s I fell in love with the unfashionable Italian club whose former players include the likes of Tomas Brolin, Fabio Cannavaro, Juan Veron, Gianfranco Zola, Faustino Asprilla and the evergreen Gigi Buffon. Parma’s problems have been on-going for over a decade since local diary giant Parmalat, who financed the club, went bankrupt. 

In many ways the club are indicative of what is going on in Italian football at another level; European performance. The club won the European Cup Winners Cup and European Super Cup in 1993, and the UEFA Cup in 1995 and 1999. Italian football was in its pomp. This era wasn't short lived. As late as 2003 AC Milan and Juventus played out a 0-0 draw at Old Trafford in an all-Italian Champions League Final. 

Despite a Seria A club winning the again in 2007 (AC Milan) and 2010 (Inter Milan), Italian clubs really aren’t competing the way they used to. In an economic sense, one could argue the league is now caught in a vicious circle, with no tendency towards equilibrium possible since the reduction of its Champions League qualification slots in 2012. This is primarily due to the performance of Italian clubs and the national league’s UEFA ranking.

Despite being clearly ahead of the German Bundesliga in 2010, Seria A is now ranked much lower than its German equivalent. Should the rapid improvement of French clubs continue, thanks to the inflow of foreign investment, it’s like Seria A will be ranked the 5th best league in the near future.  

Champions League performance has also declined since the all-Italian final of May 2003. The illustration below graphs Italian club participation from the Group Stages of the Champions League to the Final from the 2003-2004 season to this season. The last time 4 Italian clubs made the Group Stages of the competition was 2009-2010. Since 2010 Sampdoria, Udinese (twice) and Napoli have all been beaten in the 3rd Qualifying Round. Inter Milan were the last Seria A club to reach the semi-final stage, and actually went on to lift the trophy, but that was in 2010. 

With only Juventus left, it may be the case that we have no Italian representative left in Europe’s premier club competition by the end of this round. Watch this space.

By David Butler

The winner's curse is the tendency for individuals to overbid in common value auctions when information between buyers and sellers is not complete. If you are bidding in an auction with many others for an asset that you don’t know the value of, a winning bid can be overly optimistic and it can exceed the intrinsic value of the asset purchased. Simply put, if you win an auction when you don't really know what something is worth, there’s a chance you’ll be had! This curse has been shown to even affect experienced bidders.

This curse was originally conceptualized in light of auctions for oil reserves in the Mexican Gulf and famous experiments by William Samuelson and Max Bazerman during the 1980’s showed how buyers in the lab consistently fail to appreciate their information disadvantage when formulating a bid in bargaining games. When the best strategy to take is to opt out, the temptation to bid is too much for some. 

Economists have since looked to sport as a means to test for the winner's curse in the field. The big advantage of sport is that it provides scope for productivity evaluations that other auctions do not. We can tell how well an asset has performed after they are purchased, in this case a sports star.  

In particular, economists have looked toward baseball. The original study on the topic was by James Cassing and Richard Douglas. In 1980 the researchers analysed the bidding strategies of potential buyers of free agents in Major League Baseball, as naturally each franchise would place a different value on what a free agent is worth. The researchers found that from 1975 to 1980 free agents were overpaid relative to their productivity. A second study that cited the winner's curse was written in 1993 by Lawrence Kahn. While his research did not specifically set out to address the curse, Kahn ended up explaining his results in light of it. His study looked at salary and contract length for virtually all Major League Baseball players from 1987 to 1990. The winner's curse or 'super competitive' bidding was found again.  The most recent study comes from 2008 by John Burger and Stephen Walters who revise downward the strength of Cassing and Douglas’ (1980) original findings. Using superior measures of productivity to gauge player performance, they argue that there was positive returns to free agency over the late 1970’s and also the 1990’s. They suggest a ‘weak-form’ version of the winner's curse exists as the full expectations of buyers may still not be met.  

More information is often suggested as a solution to this curse but given that status and buying superstars for commercial purposes seems to be important across sports, it may always be the case that owners are not particularly concerned about efficiency or rational bids. Bounded rationality with a boosted ego may do just fine!

While the EPL deal is relatively modest in comparison to that of the NFL, what the agreement does reflect is the upward trend in the revenue to the EPL from TV income since the league’s inception. From modest beginnings of £191m over a five year period in 1992, the new deal represents a 2,589% increase on the value of the TV agreement. With the EPL’s global appeal growing and coverage broadcast in over 212 territories across the world, the EPL’s claim to be the world’s most watched league holds some validity. The continued growth in popularity of the EPL’s rendering of the beautiful game, the now commonplace foreign preseason tours of the league’s biggest and best, and the mooted overseas regular season games - similar to the NFL’s arrangement with London; mean that the continued rise in popularity of the EPL could potentially lead to TV income to rival the NFL, given the nature of soccer’s global appeal.

In a previous post, reference was made to the fact that the arrival of the EPL, BSkyB and TV revenue heralded an influx of non-British players in search of lucrative financial rewards. Following the announcement of the new EPL deal, the President of La Liga, Javier Tebas, sounded a warning to Spanish clubs to have a more equitable distribution of TV revenue or face losing its stars to the EPL. This would no doubt only further increase the profitability and selling power of the EPL product for future TV deals. Time will tell, but would Messi, Rodríguez or Ronaldo really fancy it on a wet, blustery night in Stoke? For the right price, I venture they would.

Pádraig MacConsaidín holds a BSc Government degree from University College Cork and is the Department of Government, Richard Haslam - Graduate of the Year 2014.

By Robbie Butler

I had some sympathy for my brother (and fellow blog contributor) David when we met at the gym this morning. I asked him had he watched his team (Tottenham) in the Europa League last night. He turned to me and said “No – market forces”.

Last Autumn, following Liverpool’s return to the Champions League I joked with him about Spurs’ European adventures compared to the bright lights of Madrid (where Liverpool were heading). We even spoke about whether Spurs would have been better off (in football terms) if they had finished below Manchester United last season and been absent from European competition.  Each Thursday I would joke and ask questions such as “Who are you playing in the Thursday Cup tonight?” of “What part of the USSR are you visiting this week?”

The joke was on me come November. Liverpool’s draw with Basle in Match Day 6 sent the Merseyside club into the Europa League by virtue of finishing 3rd in their Champions’ League group. While I had enjoyed Tuesday and Wednesday night football, David and every other Spurs fan, had soldiered on Thursday nights watching Spurs play Partizan, Beşiktaş and Asteras Tripolid on 3e no less!

February arrives. Spurs played Fiorentina at White Hart Lane last night. 3e broadcasts from Anfield.. Even Setanta Ireland couldn’t save him. Celtic versus Inter Milan was shown live.

Why? The answer is simply market forces. Until Spurs fans outnumber Liverpool fans in Ireland it’s hard to see the day when the former will get precedence over the latter, ceteris paribus. Good news for me but you do have to feel sorry for all those Tottenham supporters who have followed their team this autumn and winter through lesser-known-Europe. Don’t worry though – we’ll make sure you’ll never walk alone. 

By David Butler

I came across two interesting papers published relatively recently when researching penalty kicks. Both consider psychological variables that influence one party, either the goalkeeper or the kicker in a penalty shoot-out. 

1. The first finding comes from a paper published in Psychological Science in 2011 by Roskes, Sligte, Shalvi, and  De Dreu. This one relates to goalkeepers. The researchers collected data from World Cup penalty shootouts and show that Goalkeepers are more likely to dive to the right when in a losing position in a penalty shoot-out. This is attributed to psychological bias towards choosing 'right' when forced to act quickly. 

2. The second paper comes from 2009 and was published in Psychology of Sport and Exercise. This time the application is to the penalty taker.  The researchers, Jordet, Hartman and Sigmundstad show that there is a link between a penalty takers success and the length of time taken between the referee’s whistle to signal a player can proceed and when the kick is actually taken. Taking a longer time to respond to a referee’s 'ready signal' was positively correlated to successful conversions. John Considine has since told me that the book Scorecasting (reviewed by John in the book section of this website) has a  short chapter on the 'myth' that the opposition should delay (or ice) the kicker in American Football.  The data does not support the strategy for soccer.

So, when it comes to penalties maybe goalkeepers should jump to the left more and kickers should try to leave nations hold their breath a little longer!