Football is becoming more predictable; network analysis of 88 thousand matches in 11 major leagues

In recent years, excessive monetization of football and professionalism among the players have been argued to have affected the quality of the match in different ways. On the one hand, playing football has become a high-income profession and the players are highly motivated; on the other hand, stronger teams have higher incomes and therefore afford better players leading to an even stronger appearance in tournaments that can make the game more imbalanced and hence predictable. To quantify and document this observation, in this work, we take a minimalist network science approach to measure the predictability of football over 26 years in major European leagues. We show that over time, the games in major leagues have indeed become more predictable. We provide further support for this observation by showing that inequality between teams has increased and the home-field advantage has been vanishing ubiquitously. We do not include any direct analysis on the effects of monetization on football’s predictability or therefore, lack of excitement; however, we propose several hypotheses which could be tested in future analyses.

Baseball Home Field Advantage Without Fans in the Stands

Home field advantage is universally accepted across most major sports and levels of competition. However, exact causes of home field advantage have been difficult to disentangle. The COVID-19 pandemic offers a unique, natural experiment to isolate elements related to home field advantage since all 2020 regular season Major League Baseball games were played without fans. Results provide no statistically significant evidence of a difference in home field advantage between the 2019 and 2020 seasons, evidence that home crowd support is not a driver of home field advantage. There does appear to be a statistical advantage by the home team batting second in the inning. Travel fatigue seems to have no impact on home field advantage, and while home field advantage seems to increase throughout the 2020 season, we chalk that up to small sample noise. Despite lacking historical precedence, betting markets seemingly respond efficiently to the new home conditions. Keywords: home field advantage, market efficiency, baseball, ghost games

Competitive Balance and the Away Goals Rule During Extra Time

The Union of European Football Associations is currently reviewing the away goals rule during extra time in the knockout rounds of the Champions League. We model extra time as a two-stage contest. Assuming a home-field advantage we analyze the effect of the away goals rule on the competitive balance between teams. Our analysis suggests that the away goals rule levels the competitive imbalance introduced by the home-field advantage in the quarter and semi-finals and that in the round of 16 weaker teams should play first home and then away so that they benefit from the away goals rule during extra time.