By Robbie Butler

The Europa League Final will be contested tonight in the Stadion Miejski, Gdańsk between Manchester United and Villarreal. Regardless of the winner, tonight will confirm a decade of dominance in the competition by both English and Spanish clubs. 

The last time a club outside of these two leagues won the Europa League was in 2010/11 when Porto defeated Braga in Dublin (I was there). Since then Spanish clubs have won the title 6 times, and English clubs 3 times.

Such dominance by two leagues is unprecedented in the 50 year history of the tournament. It strikes at the heart of competitive balance. Where are the other leagues gone? There has not been a Italian winner since 1999 (Parma) and no German winner since Schalke in 1997.

It would appear than the depth of the English and Spanish leagues is helping teams progress in the Europa League with no little help from the Champions League back-door route. Manchester United will have taken this road should they win tonight, and Seville's remarkable record since 2006 (winning the trophy 6 times!) has been ably assisted by a Champions League Group Stage exit.

Given the quality of the Premier League and La Liga, continued dominance in this competition is likely. A final in Seville, Spain next year will certainly help motivate La Liga clubs. As if Seville needed an extra help in the Europa League!

By John Considine

Italy won last Saturday's Eurovision Song Contest.  The contest is the music equivalent of the recently proposed European Super League.  It was established by a cartel of European public sector broadcasters.  It reflected the difference in the broadcasting landscape either side of the Atlantic.  That landscape had, and continues to have, implications for the broadcasting of sport.  A prime example is the EU Television Without Frontier directive where some sporting events have to be shown on free-to-air TV with a large market penetration.

There are other differences between the way sport is broadcast in the US and in Europe.  Some are driven by the sporting landscape.  American football, baseball, and basketball have many breaks in the activity that make them suitable for commercial TV where adverts can be sold.  By contrast, a game of soccer has one scheduled break in the middle of two 45-minute periods of activity.  In relative terms, the game is more suitable to subscription TV.

When soccer games returned after the initial lockdown, there was a water-break.  The change did not last long and the water break is now gone.  The water-break was an opportunity for the game to go to a four-quarter format.  That would have been an opportunity for broadcasters to sell advertising.  It could also make the game fairer by switching ends at the end of each quarter as in American football.

The water-break remains in GAA games.  I presume that in any return to "normality" the water-break will disappear from the game.  It is something that should be considered carefully.  My proposal would be for four quarters of twenty minutes each (with team swapping ends at each quarter).  It is 50 years since the GAA had games that had to last 80 minutes.  However, current games last nearly 80 minutes and there is no comparison in the athletes of today and those of the early 1970s.  A planned break after every twenty minutes would probably be financial rewarding.  It might also help mitigate against some of the weather induced "games of two halves".

Any return to "normality" will probably also change what is offered on the GAA broadcasting landscape.  Or maybe not.  There has been an evolution in the way GAA games are broadcast.  The pandemic has increased the speed of this evolution.  But some recently introduced changes might be reversed.  At the highest level of the game (inter-county), someone living in Ireland can purchase a subscription to a set of GAA games and/or they can purchase particular games on a pay-per-view basis.  When spectators are allowed return to venues to watch games, there might be an inclination to curtail the availability of what can be purchased.  Again, I would suggest that some of the changes are retained.  Those decision makers, with access to the data on viewership, should evaluate the possibilities.

I have talked to some of those involved below broadcasting/streaming "lower" level games.  Those conversations, and the associated viewing figures, suggest that there is an audience for broadcasting/streaming services beyond those who would go to the venues.  Again, there is food for thought for those deciding how supporters will be allowed see their teams when crowds return to venues.  I will deal with this lower end of GAA broadcasting in a future post. 

By Robbie Butler

The 2021/22 academic year at University College Cork will see the awarding of the James Quirk Memorial Prize in Sports Economics. The prize is open to all students registered in sports economics at UCC and is funded by the Quirk Estate in Kansas, United States.

As said previously on this forum, Jim a retired Caltech Economics Professor (1971-1987) and a leading voice in sports economics who passed away in June of last year. In 1971 he published “An Economic Model of a Professional Sports League” with Mohamed El Hodiri in the Journal of Political Economy and would go on to publish many other highly influential papers in sports economics and related areas. 

The prize can be found listed here on the UCC website.

Sneakernomics is produced by BBC Radio 4.  It is written and presented by Nicholas Smith. ​

By John Considine

Yesterday, as I watched the closing kilometers of Stage 9 of the Giro, I was reminded of how cycling depends on television.  The final 1.6km of the 158km stage was on gravel.  It was the final short "climb" of a stage with four previous climbs (see profile opposite).  An ideal stage for a Sunday TV audience.

In an edited volume on The Economics of Professional Road Cycling, Daam Van Reeth sets out some of the reasons for the successful marriage between cycling and television.  Cycling needs broadcast technology in a way that other sports do not.  A spectator at the finish line of yesterday's stage would have got to see who won the race and the last few meters of cycling.  Without technology they would not have known when the leaders would arrive or what happened during most of the four hours of cycling.  Contrast this with a spectator at the FA Cup final the previous day.  Such a spectator could have watched Leicester defeat Chelsea without ever accessing technology.  They could have taken in the 90+ minutes from the comfort of their seat in Wembley.

The cameras located on the motorcycles amongst the riders and in the helicopters above the riders make the broadcast a promotional tool for regional authorities.  Van Reeth explains how the Giro took the lead in the displaying of non-sporting information in 2013.  Information about the local landscape, buildings, and food feature regularly.  A welcome addition when the action can be limited.

A key feature is that many of the stages in a Grand Tour like the Giro tend to be contested and broadcasted outside prime time for TV.  This has its advantages and disadvantages.  Broadcasters can view it as an alternative to re-runs of soaps, sitcoms, or crime shows.  But it also means that weekday broadcasts attract fewer viewers.  Outside the Tour de France, most races struggle to bring in large numbers.  This is why the potentially more exciting stages are scheduled for the weekend.  The addition of 1.6km of gravel added to the spectacle for the TV audience.

On the sporting side, the main contenders hunted down the breakaway riders on the gravel.  The stage winner moved into the overall leader's pink jersey and, at the end of the stage, the top 10 General Classification riders were within one minute of each other.  A stage that was well designed and well scheduled for a TV audience.

By David Butler

As the football season is ending for major European leagues it's timely to consider the COVID positive trends over the season. The chart below plots the trend in COVID positive cases for Premier League clubs from the 31st August to May 9th.

On average, there was 7 weekly positive cases in the EPL and a median of 4. 2,111 weekly tests were carried out on average. With the exception of the tests over three match weeks from the 21st of December to the 10th of January, the positivity rate did not reach 1%.  It hovered between 1%- 2% during the Christmas period.

There is a noticeable dip on the 1st-3rd January. Only 12 individuals were COVID positive. This was a shorter time period than usual and only 984 tests were carried out. I would guess the true number  of positive cases was higher. These positive cases may have been picked up the following week too, where we see the peak of 36 positive cases.
​
The positivity rate tumbled from February. The 19th-25th of April was the first week of the season where no positive cases were recorded.  

By Sean O'Connor

Ireland’s opening two results for the 2022 FIFA World Cup qualifying campaign has made it extremely unlikely that Stephen Kenny and his team will be playing in Qatar come next winter. For many, this will mark another major tournament that they will not be able to attend to support the Boys in Green. While some supporters are more results orientated, others might prefer for Ireland to play a more attractive brand of football and then there is the middle ground who would like a half-way house of the two. In order to compare Kenny’s Ireland team to what has come before him, it is useful to look at how Irish teams have fared in previous qualifying campaigns. 

Today’s post looks at the fortune of Irish teams throughout qualifying campaigns from World Cup 1986, up to and including the recent Euro 2020 (2021) campaign under Mick McCarthy.  In total, the results of 167 qualifying games are examined. Play-off games are not taken into account. Figure 1 plots the distribution of score lines. To interpret, a score of 2-2 in a game would have a difference of 0, while a 3-1 win would have a difference of 2 and a 2-1 loss would have a difference of -1.

As can be seen from the below, nearly 4 in 10 Irish qualifying games (35.2%) end in a draw. This is then followed by a one goal difference win. 

As many supporters are probably aware, games involving Ireland tend to be extremely close contests, with the small margins generally making the difference.

We can also examine this by seedings and draw some interesting insights. Table 1 below expands on the graph above but breaks results out by seedings. Note prior to looking at this we should note that across different qualifying campaigns the number of teams in a group differ. Of the 17 qualifying campaigns examined, in 7 cases there were 5-team groups, in 9 cases there were 6-team groups and on 1 occasion it was a 7-team group.

Of the most frequent results against opposition teams the following are the most frequent results:
   Top seeds - Draw followed by one goal winning margin.
   Second seeds - Draw followed by one goal losing margin.
   Third seeds - Draw followed by a one goal losing margin.
   Fourth seeds - Draw followed by a one goal winning margin.
   Fifth seeds - One goal winning margin followed by a two and three goal winning margin.
   Sixth and Seventh seeds - Two goal winning margin followed by a draw and three goal winning margin.

​Finally, we can condense Table 1 further and include the addition of points achieved by Ireland against different seedings. This is done in Table 2. To interpret, out of the total 96 available points against first seeds, Ireland have won 33 or have 34.4%. As we might have thought, the majority of points for Ireland tend to come against lower seeded teams. It will be interesting to see if this trend will hold under our latest manager moving forward. 

By Robbie Butler

When almost all UEFA football came to a halt in March 2020, European leagues became frozen in time. Some leagues were cancelled, others used predicted points to reach a final league table, and others returned to play in empty stadiums during the summer months. 

While Liverpool finally won the Premier League and Real Madrid La Liga, the other three big leagues in Europe were won by the defending champions - PSG, Bayern Munich and Juventus. In the cases of Bayern and Juve, it was their 8th and 9th consecutive league titles.

​They were not alone in UEFA leagues in this regard. Prior to the outbreak of Covid-19, eight teams in Europe had winning streaks of 6 years or more. These are presented to the left below.

Following the resumption of football behind closed doors it is interesting to observe how many of these streaks survived. 

Probably the most high-profile casualties were the two teams seeking 10-in-a-row; Celtic and Juventus. Both the Scottish and Italian champions failed to live up to expectations during the 2020/21 season when playing behind closed doors.

Of course, this is not the only reason why they may have come up well short, but neither looked like winning their 10th title in a row from early in the season. Inter Milan (last weekend) and Rangers (a number of weeks ago) have already been crowned champions of Italy and Scotland respectively. 

But these two are not alone in losing their streak. APOEL and Astana both lost their streaks in 2020 and 2021. Of the 8 teams that entered the Covid-19 era with a streak in tact, just 4 are still standing; Bayern, Ludogorets, Qarabag and Red Bull Salzburg. 

It will be interesting to see if a return of fans helps or hinders the cause of the four remaining streaks that have survived Covid. 

By John Considine

As the NFL draft approached, many commentators appealed to the economics of the draft to explain potential decisions.  A prime example came a few days ago when Mike Tomlin was asked about who makes the decisions in the Pittsburgh draft room.  Tomlin said “At the end of the day, Art Rooney is the boss.”  Interestingly, many of the same commentators seemed to suggest that the owners leveraged their financial power to make a decision on the player they liked in sporting terms rather than the player as a financial asset.

So, what is the economics of the draft?  A pretty good answer to that question is provided by Joel Maxcy’s chapter in The Economics of the National Football League: The State of the Art.  Published in 2012, the book remains relevant even though some of the sentiments expressed might need to be changed, e.g. in a chapter on attendance there is the pre-pandemic sentence "No one wants to watch a game [on TV] at a partially filled stadium even if they are at home."

Maxcy has three main sections in his chapter: History; Economic Analysis; and, Legal Analysis.  The headings suggest a brighter distinction between the sections than is the case.  He could easily have worked the word “economic” into the other headings.  The history section provides a concise account of how interaction between interested parties shaped the development of the NFL.  Between owners of weaker and stronger teams.  Between college and professional organisations.  Between alternative professional leagues.  Between owners and players.  The latter also shows up in the Legal Analysis section where the existence of a Collective Bargaining Agreement has possibly saved the NFL in some antitrust cases.
 
The full title of Maxcy’s chapter is “Economics of the NFL Player Entry Draft System”.  In the economics analysis section, there is some emphasis on the impact of the entry system on salaries.  Maxcy documents some of the increase in salaries that occurred when there was an alternative league.  Another part of the economic analysis section is devoted to the alternative evidence on the competitive balance impact of the draft.  And, there is also a discussion of possible biases in the draft, e.g. those in favour of major colleges and those against black players.
 
Although published almost a decade ago, Maxcy’s chapter remains a nice account of the economics of the NFL draft.  In that decade (sport) economic analysis has further shifted towards empirical analysis of larger data sets.  However, the history and legal sections of this chapter shows that analysis of individual, non-repeating, events can be significant.  Because many of these can be difficult to measure and count, it could mean that their economic, as well as their statistical, significance is lost.  Including a dummy variable for an owner is a less than ideal solution.

By David Butler

Watching the Leicester vs. Crystal Palace match Monday night I was struck by Leicester’s resilience and, perhaps, what they have learned from last season. I was also thinking about why they are exciting to watch. It seemed that they could often turn matches around. 

As a football supporter, this is where the heartache often lies for me. Yes, losing a match late on is stinging. But losing a match from a winning position brings a certain type of psychological pain – maybe there’s some loss aversion going on.

The table below shows the data for EPL clubs over the last two seasons on this topic. The ‘for’ column shows the number of times a club won from a losing position and the ‘against’ column shows the number of times clubs lost from a winning position.  It is sorted by ‘against’ (decreasing) and then by ‘for’ (increasing). This might give us some insight as to which fans have it hardest.

Spare a thought for Aston Villa fans and those who follow the Saints. Over this season and last, they have lost from winning positions 8 times. Villa fans have only seen their team turn it around 3 times.

Manchester United fans should be very happy. They have regularly shown great resilience, coming from behind (especially away from home) and have only suffered a turnaround once - against Tottenham at home this season.

Some clubs feature quite low on the list a) because they may be not even good enough to get ahead in the first place and b) because they are too good to go behind.

My intuition was right - Leicester are joint top for turning matches around, along with Liverpool.

I'll follow up on this soon and looked at how the psychological pain might be ramped up by losing from a winning position late on.