nep-spo New Economics Papers
on Sports and Economics
Issue of 2022‒05‒02
four papers chosen by
Humberto Barreto
DePauw University

  1. A profitable model for predicting the over/under market in football By Wheatcroft, Edward
  2. Emotions and performance: A quasi natural experiment from the FIFA World Cup By Jorge Tovar
  3. Football, alcohol and domestic abuse By Ivandic, Ria; Kirchmaier, Thomas; Torres I Blas, Neus
  4. How to Reduce Discrimination? Evidence from a Field Experiment in Amateur Soccer By Dur, Robert; Gomez-Gonzalez, Carlos; Nesseler, Cornel

  1. By: Wheatcroft, Edward
    Abstract: The over/under 2.5 goals betting market allows gamblers to bet on whether the total number of goals in a football match will exceed 2.5. In this paper, a set of ratings, named ‘Generalised Attacking Performance’ (GAP) ratings, are defined which measure the attacking and defensive performance of each team in a league. GAP ratings are used to forecast matches in ten European football leagues and their profitability is tested in the over/under market using two value betting strategies. GAP ratings with match statistics such as shots and shots on target as inputs are shown to yield better predictive value than the number of goals. An average profit of around 0.8 percent per bet taken is demonstrated over twelve years when using only shots and corners (and not goals) as inputs. The betting strategy is shown to be robust by comparing it to a random betting strategy.
    Keywords: probability forecasting; sports forecasting; football forecasting; football predictions; soccer predictions; value betting
    JEL: C1
    Date: 2020–07–01
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ehl:lserod:103712&r=
  2. By: Jorge Tovar
    Abstract: Emotions are intrinsic components of human behavior that have the capacity to affect how individuals perform in their daily activities. Much of the literature has explored the topic using experimental data or, when using sporting events, focusing on pre-competition triggers. This paper uses granular, event-level data from the 2018 FIFA football World Cup to study for the first time how observed and naturally induced emotions impact performance as measured by each player's passing ability. The quasi-natural experimental setup is rich enough to study the influence of positive and negative emotions and their duration. The main result shows that negative emotions negatively impact individual performance between 3 and 9 minutes of the trigger effect.
    Keywords: sports economics, workers performance, emotions.
    JEL: D91 Z29 C21
    Date: 2022–04–21
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:col:000089:020068&r=
  3. By: Ivandic, Ria; Kirchmaier, Thomas; Torres I Blas, Neus
    Abstract: We study the role of alcohol and emotions in explaining the dynamics in domestic abuse following major football games. We match confidential and uniquely detailed individual call data from Greater Manchester with the timing of football matches over a period of eight years to estimate the effect on domestic abuse. We first observe a 5% decrease in incidents during the 2-hour duration of the game suggesting a substitution effect of football and domestic abuse. However, following the initial decrease, after the game, domestic abuse starts increasing and peaks about ten hours after the game, leading to a positive cumulative effect. We find that all increases are driven by perpetrators that had consumed alcohol, and when games were played before 7pm. Unexpected game results are not found to have a significant effect.
    Keywords: domestic abuse; crime; football; alcohol
    JEL: J12 I12
    Date: 2021–07–04
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ehl:lserod:113923&r=
  4. By: Dur, Robert (Erasmus University Rotterdam); Gomez-Gonzalez, Carlos (University of Zurich); Nesseler, Cornel (Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU))
    Abstract: A rich literature shows that ethnic discrimination is an omnipresent and highly persistent phenomenon. Little is known, however, about how to reduce discrimination. This study reports the results of a large-scale field experiment we ran together with the Norwegian Football Federation. The federation sent an email to a random selection of about 500 amateur soccer coaches, pointing towards the important role that soccer can play in promoting inclusivity and reducing racism in society and calling on the coaches to be open to all interested applicants. Two weeks later, we sent fictitious applications to join an amateur club, using either a native-sounding or a foreign-sounding name, to the same coaches and to a random selection of about 500 coaches who form the control group. In line with earlier research, we find that applications from people with a native-sounding name receive significantly more positive responses than applications from people with a foreign-sounding name. Surprisingly and unintentionally, the email from the federation substantially increased rather than decreased this gap. Our study underlines the importance of running field experiments to check whether well-intended initiatives are effective in reducing discrimination.
    Keywords: ethnic discrimination, intervention, field experiment, correspondence test, amateur soccer
    JEL: C93 J15 Z29
    Date: 2022–03
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp15186&r=

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