By Robbie Butler

Maybe one of the reasons I enjoy football and economics is because both are fundamentally about making decisions. Maybe this is why I have written so much about VAR, my dislike of the technology and how it has changed how the sport is consumed. In my opinion, things reached a new low on Sunday with the awarding of Erling Haaland's goal against Manchester United.

And a new low is reaching some depths. I didn't think Luis Diaz's disallowed goal against Spurs in 2023 could be surpassed but we may have a candidate now.

As Roy Keane alluded to in post-match commentary, anyone who has played the game knows Enzo Fernandez (below) is interfering with play, and as a result, offside. The match officials concluded the same in real-time. The assistant referee raised his flag immediately after Haaland scored and the goal was deemed offside.

I don't believe a single football fan would have objected to this decision had the game restarted with a free-kick, as has been the case for about a hundred years when such a scenario occurs. Enter VAR. The team in Stockley Park interpreted the rules to mean Fernandez was not offside and the goal stands. It is not how offside is meant to work, nor, in my opinion, the correct interpretation of the wording.

But to compound this mistake, Pro Ref, formerly known as the PGMOL or Professional Game Match Officials Limited, issued an apologetic statement, saying: "the VAR did not recognise the likely impact of his position and should have recommended an on-field review." This statement fails to state that there was an "on-field review". It was done in real time. By the match officials. Who made the right decision.

The VAR then got involved in something where it was not "clear" or "obvious" that a mistake had been made and ended up overturning the correct decision. Today's statement confirms that, and also confirms what a growing number of people believe: VAR makes the game worse, not better, and introduces mistakes that would not be there had the technology not been adopted. It effectively does the exact opposite of what it was intended to do.

By Robbie Butler

I recently co-authored a paper that has been published in Oxford Economic Papers. The sport under examination - horse racing. Using data from racing in Great Britain we investiagte instances were jockeys are banned for percived non-trying. The abstract is below. ​

A fundamental challenge in the principal–agent relationships is ensuring agents exert effort when their actions are not perfectly observable. We examine a natural experiment in effort enforcement in British horseracing, where jockeys are required not only to try to win but to be visibly seen to be trying. Jockeys who appear not to be trying face suspensions and significant penalties in terms of income forgone. Using a dataset of some 60,000 races involving more than 1,500 jockeys and 17,000 horses, we test whether these apparent non-trying events represent attempts to fix a race or influence future races. We find no evidence to support either hypothesis. Performance neither improves in the races before, nor deteriorates in the races after, a ban. Punishments for non-trying may nonetheless be rational as a deterrence mechanism–making an example of a small number of jockeys serves as a motivation for the rest: pour encourager les autres.

The full paper is available here.

By Robbie Butler

Many papers in sports economic focus on referee behaviour. This work rests on a load-bearing assumption: referees correctly apply the laws of the game. Whether one measures  home bias, added-time effects, card thresholds or anything else the referee does the core questions ask there is a deviation from that neutral baseline? It works because we assume referees are entirely professional and impartial.

This week gave the field an unusually pointed real-world test of that assumption. On the Jamie Vardy's Having a Party podcast, former Premier League referee Mike Dean, who officiated 553 top-flight matches in the English Premier League over more than two decades, described private "games" he played during live matches.

Dean spoke about how he would see how long he could avoid blowing his whistle (once reportedly 20–25 minutes) and how long he could avoid leaving the centre circle (around 15 minutes on one occasion).

While many former referees have rebutted these claims, the fact Dean himself is saying he did this is extraordinary. It also occurred to me that a past paper of my included Mike Dean in the sample. While his admission did not address what we tested, one has to wonder where these “games” ended?

By Shona Finn

Hawk-Eye is a ball-location and score-detection technology that is used to help referees make more accurate decisions during matches. It combines specialised cameras and sensors with computer software that calculates the exact path of the ball or sliotar. The software analyses information from multiple camera angles in real time before determining whether the ball has passed inside or outside the posts. Similar technologies are also used in sports such as tennis and soccer to make accurate line and goal decisions.
 
This post will ignore the financial cost of the system to the GAA.  Instead, it will focus on other costs involved in the decision-making system.  Hawk-Eye demonstrates cost minimisation and trade-offs by balancing two competing costs: delaying the game and making an incorrect decision. Reviews pause play, but avoiding reviews increases the risk of wrong decisions. The optimisation challenge is finding the balance that minimises the combined cost of these two outcomes.
 
At one extreme, imagine Hawk-Eye reviewed every shot, incorrect decisions would become rare, but constant interruptions would slow the game, disrupt momentum, frustrate spectators and increase operating costs.  In this situation, the cost of incorrect decisions is very low, but the cost of delay becomes extremely high.
 
At the opposite extreme, imagine Hawk-Eye was never used or not available. The game would continue without interruptions, making the cost of delay almost zero.  However, the likelihood of incorrect decisions would increase, particularly in close calls where it is difficult for umpires to judge accurately.  A wrongly awarded or disallowed point could affect the result of a match, leading to frustration for all. The cost of delay is minimised, but the cost of incorrect decisions becomes very high.
 
The benefits of using Hawk-Eye also depend on the score margin during the game. If one team leads by 20 points, one incorrect score is unlikely to affect the result, so the benefit of a review may be lower than the cost of delaying play. However, if the teams are level or separated by only one point, the value of making the correct decision is much greater. A single point could decide the winner, meaning the cost of an incorrect decision is much higher.
 
Timing also affects the trade-off. Early in a match, teams have more time to recover from an incorrect decision. Near the end, however, a single point may decide the result, making the benefit of a review greater than the cost of a short delay. This demonstrates the economic principle of trade-offs, where the best decision is the one that minimises the total decision-making costs rather than eliminating only one type of cost.

(Shona is a second year student of economics in UCC.)

By Robbie Butler

The annual gathering of the European Sport Economics Association was held in Zurich from the 19th to the 21st of August.

Hosted by the University of Zurich, the event was preceded by the PhD Workshop, which I had the pleasure of speaking at. More than a dozen students, registered on various postgraduate and PhD programmes across the world, enjoyed two and a half days of instruction from leading sports economists and other academics in the field, including Carl Singleton (University of Stirling), Alex Krumer (Molde University College), Dennis Coates (University of Maryland), Ulrich Brandes (ETH Zurich), and Brian Soebbing (University of Alberta), as well as local hosts Helmut Dietl and Raphael Flepp.

The conference began on Wednesday afternoon with the traditional panel discussion entitled "Innovation in Sports," followed by the first set of parallel sessions. The evening ended with a spectacular, panoramic view of Zurich from high up in the university. In total, almost 80 papers were presented, across a multitude of sports and topics in economics, with nearly 100 participants engaging in the conference in one form or another.

The annual general meeting was held in an iconic room that had once hosted Winston Churchill in 1946, where he spoke of a "United States of Europe" as the threat of Soviet expansion emerged on the European continent.

The highlight of the three days for me was a visit to the FIFA Museum in the heart of Zurich. Delegates were given a guided tour of the artefacts on show from each World Cup tournament to date (excluding 2026). Items and memorabilia included jerseys worn by Diego Maradona (World Cup 1986) and Lothar Matthäus (World Cup 1990), as well as match balls from finals, football boots from the 1954 final, and even the pipe of a World Cup-winning manager, now nearly 100 years old.
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The 2027 conference — the 18th to date — will be held at the University of Poznań, Poland, in the last week of August.

We will take our normal summer break from today, much later than normal, due to the excitment of posting about the World Cup, Tour de France and GAA season.

We will return on the 31st of August 2026. 

By Robbie Butler

Our recent paper in the Journal of Sports Economics "Objective Calls Under the Spotlight: Referee Consistency and Behaviour on Football's Biggest Stage" was picked by by NBC Digital News. The story can be found here. 

Further coverage locally can be found here and here.

By Robbie Butler

While England exited the 2026 World Cup last night, the Three Lions will still play the full complement of 8 games. The Bronze Medal game will be held Saturday night in Miami, Florida. It will be England's second visit to Miami in recent days and bring the curtain down on their trip to the United States, which also included a short stay in Mexico.

The full schedule is as follows. England played Croatia at Dallas Stadium (June 17), Ghana at Boston Stadium (June 23), Panama at New York/New Jersey Stadium (June 27), DR Congo at Atlanta Stadium (July 1), Mexico at Mexico City Stadium (July 6), Norway at Miami Stadium (July 11), and Argentina in the semi-final at Atlanta Stadium (July 15), and after the semi-final defeat to Argentina, they now head back to the Miami Stadium to meet France.
​
Plot those eight fixtures on a map and the scale of the undertaking becomes clear. Measured venue to venue as the crow flies, England's itinerary covers some 10,100 km (about 6,300 miles, from Texas up to New England, down the eastern seaboard to Atlanta, across the border to the altitude of Mexico City, and finally a shuttle between Miami and Atlanta to close out the tournament.
But that figure is only the floor.

In reality, England based themselves in Kansas City for the duration of the tournament, training at Swope Soccer Village and flying out to each fixture from the middle of the country. The location was chosen precisely because it is central, an attempt to keep travel demands down across a tournament sprawled over three countries and 16 host cities. The irony is that a hub-and-spoke itinerary roughly doubles the distance flown. A return trip from Kansas City to each of England's eight fixtures works out at somewhere between 23,500 and 25,600 km (roughly 14,600 to 15,900 miles), depending on whether the squad returned to base between the semi-final and Saturday's bronze medal match or flew directly from Atlanta to Miami. Add the transatlantic legs to get the party there and home again, and England's World Cup will have involved around 40,000 km of flying - the circumferenceof the Earth roughly

What does that mean in emissions terms? Precise figures would require England's actual flight logs, but a reasonable estimate for in-tournament shuttling alone accounts for roughly 200-250 tonnes of CO2, with the transatlantic round trip adding perhaps 140 tonnes more. 

And the team is the smallest part of the story. Every squad at this expanded 48-team tournament faces a version of the same itinerary. Backroom staff, equipment freight and media operations travel separately. Most significantly of all, the tens of thousands of England supporters who criss-crossed North America to follow the side, many on long-haul flights from the UK for individual matches, will have generated emissions that dwarf the team's own by orders of magnitude.
None of this is unique to England, and little of it was avoidable once FIFA settled on a three-nation, continent-spanning format. A full account of all travel and emmission can be found in our European Sport Management Quarterly paper here.

By John Considine

Chapter 2 of Beautiful Game Theory is titled "Vernon Smith meets Messi".  Vernon Smith is an economist who shared the 2002 Nobel Prize with Daniel Kahneman.  Smith got it for his work in experimental economics.  Chapter 2 examines how, in an experimental laboratory setting, professional soccer players play a card game similar to a penalty kick.  The results show that the soccer players can "do the math" even if they might not be able to articulate their strategy.

To motivate the discussion in Chapter 2, the conversations around two penalty kicks are presented.  One penalty kick involved Messi.  There was a delay of one week between the award of the kick and the excution of the kick.  A few nights before the penalty kick was to be taken, a discussion took place between the goalkeeper and others.  It was of the "if he knows that I know that he knows that I know ..." variety.  The second penalty presented at the start of Chapter 2 comes from the 1994 FA Cup final.  The discussion takes place between Eric Cantona and the media after the game.  Initially, Cantona also engaged in the "if he knows that I know ..." variety of explanation before declaring "You know what?  The truth is that I just kicked it".

Beautiful Game Theory was published just over a decade ago.  If a second edition was being published today it might have another penalty added.  The penalty would illustrated a delay of just under 20 minutes.  Much shorter than the week that Messi had to wait and much longer than the time Cantona had to make up his mind.  The penalty would come from the end of the AFCON final of 2026.  The taker was Morocco's Brahim Diaz.  Diaz attempted a "Panenka" against a goalkeeper that had previously saved another "Panenka" from Sergio Aguero.  Moreover, he attempted it with his "weaker" foot.  That particular penalty is a useful one to consider when considering the differences in the economic and psychological explanations of player behavior (e.g. here or here).

If there is a penalty for Morocco in tonight's World Cup quarter-final then there is a good chance that Diaz will take the penalty.

By John Considine

A previous blog post on this site suggests that Donald Trump might be on to something when he questions the purpose of red cards.  That post is called "What's wrong with soccer?" and the question itself is from a publication in the Georgetown Law Journal.  The publication raised the issue of the time invariance of the red card.  Compare the issuing of a red card in the 1st minute versus 89th minute.

Then there is the issue of a player being banned from a future game.  Seen as a punishment, it seems logical that a player and team might suffer beyond the game in which the offence occured.  However, if one looks at who benefits, then it is a little less clear.  There is a sort of externality for a team not party to the original transgression.