Does The Betting Industry Price Gender? Evidence from Professional Tennis

This research addresses the importance of gender in the pricing process of the sports betting industry. Specifically, we investigate the impact of gender in the prices that bookmakers offer for tennis matches. Despite widespread evidence of gender bias both in the practice of the sport and its media coverage, tennis is one of the sports that has done most to achieve equality. The analysis of 51,881 tennis matches reveals that betting firms quote higher prices for women's matches than for men's, even when considering uncertainty due to the surprise factor and the media attention. The separate analysis of two bookmakers strengthens the evidence for the role of media attention as a source of gender-related information asymmetry.

Pinning down the gap: gender and the online representation of professional tennis players

Sport is a powerful social institution where hegemonic masculinity is constantly constructed and naturalised through the positioning of physicality and athleticism alongside maleness. Female athletes continue to be sub-ordinated by means of under-representation and trivialising gender discourses. So far, the extensive discussion of gendered language in sports media has primarily focussed on identifying the manifestations of gender bias in traditional news media. There has been little endeavour to explore the language of online media and tournament organisers. This study addresses that gap by comparing online gender representations of tennis players during the Wimbledon Championships 2018 on five online news websites and the tournament website. It also contributes to existing literature by providing corpus evidence of gender bias in sports media. The corpus consists of 1,622 articles (1,076,475 tokens). Findings from frequency, collocation and concordance analysis indicate that despite some instances of gender-neutral representations, female players are prone to gender marking and gender-bland sexism on all websites. I argue that the challenges women face relate to the tension between femininity and athleticism, and the misguided belief that women need to but can never eliminate the muscle gap.

Diferencias de género en la aproximación al cambio de dirección en tenistas profesionales (Gender differences in the approach to change of direction in professional tennis players)

El objetivo de este estudio fue medir las velocidades de aproximación a los cambios de dirección (CDD), tras desplazamientos de más de 4 metros, entre hombres y mujeres en el fondo de la pista durante partidos de tenis de élite. Se seleccionó un partido de cada uno de los 5 mejores tenistas masculinos y femeninos del ranking ATP y WTA. Y, de cada partido, 15 CDD. Sobre cada CDD, se aplicó un sistema de seguimiento automático mediante videoanálisis basado en tres puntos corporales (cabeza, tronco y cadera). Se encontraron mayores velocidades en hombres en todos los momentos analizados a partir del penúltimo apoyo (PEN) antes del CDD. También se encontraron diferencias entre ambos sexos en las velocidades parciales durante los pasos previos al CDD. Durante aproximación al CDD, la velocidad de los hombres a partir del antepenúltimo apoyo (ANT) antes del CDD fue aumentada en el PEN y disminuyó en el último apoyo (ULT) antes del CDD, mientras que las mujeres, disminuyeron progresivamente su velocidad a partir del ANT. En conclusión, existen diferencias entre hombres y mujeres en la aproximación a un cambio de dirección, y por tanto en la preparación de golpeos. Por lo tanto, la información proporcionada en este estudio es de vital importancia para el planteamiento de entrenamientos. Abstract. The objective of this study was to measure and compare between genders, speeds of approach to the changes of direction (CDD), after displacements of more than 4 meters in the bottom of the court present in elite tennis. 15 CDDs were selected during a match, from each of the top 5 male and female tennis players in the ATP and WTA rankings. On them, an automatic monitoring system was applied by video analysis based on three body points (head, trunk and hip). Higher velocity values were found for men at all moments analyzed from the penultimate step (PEN) before CDD, as well as substantial differences between both genders in partial velocities during steps prior to CDD. During approach to the CDD, the speed of men from the third to last step before the CDD (ANT) was increased in the PEN and decreased in the last step before the CDD (ULT), while the women progressively decreased their speed from of the ANT. In conclusion, there are many differences between men and women when approaching a change of direction, and therefore in the preparation of blows. Therefore, the information provided in this study is of vital importance for the training approach by coaches and physical trainers.

How Nissin Represented Naomi Osaka: Race, Gender, and Sport in Japanese Advertising

In January 2019, instant noodle giant Nissin Foods released two animated advertisements online featuring Naomi Osaka, which elicited backlash over “whitewashing” the multiracial professional tennis player who represents Japan. Although Nissin has since pulled the advertisements and officially apologized for portraying Osaka as lighter-skinned, underlying these issues are also those of gender, especially its intersections with race/ethnicity, nation, and sport in Japanese media. Employing discourse analysis of these two advertisements, this article examines how Nissin represented Osaka and what ideologies these representations reflect in Japanese society. Drawing on intersectional and transnational feminist cultural studies approaches, we argue that the advertisements’ representation of Osaka and the ensuing controversy reflect racialized and gendered ideologies in an allegedly homogeneous Japanese society, informed by local media and popular cultures that regularly portray “racially neutral” characters, celebrate lighter-skinned hāfu (half; multiracial) women, and diminish sportswomen’s athletic abilities. This article contributes to communication and sport studies by situating Osaka within broader contexts of how hāfu and sporting women are depicted in Japanese media and how elite sportswomen and multiracial athletes are portrayed in international media. Our article concludes by offering two suggestions on how to research multiracial sportswomen in the media.

Forecasting serve performance in professional tennis matches

Many research papers on tennis match prediction use a hierarchical Markov Model. To predict match outcomes, this model requires input parameters for each player’s serving ability. While these parameters are often computed directly from each player’s historical percentages of points won on serve and return, doing so fails to address bias due to limited sample size and differences in strength of schedule. In this paper, we explore a handful of novel approaches to forecasting serve performance that specifically address these limitations. By applying an Efron-Morris estimator, we provide a means to robustly forecast outcomes when players have limited match data over the past year. Next, through tracking expected serve and return performance in past matches, we account for strength of schedule across all points in a player’s match history. Finally, we demonstrate a new way to synthesize historical serve data with the predictive power of Elo ratings. When forecasting serve performance across 7,622 ATP tour-level matches from 2014-2016, all three of these proposed methods outperformed Barnett and Clarke’s standard approach.