Cargando…

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, stron...

Descripción completa

Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Maimone, Victor Martins, Yasseri, Taha
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: The Royal Society 2021
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8672071/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34925866
http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rsos.210617
_version_ 1784615284467826688
author Maimone, Victor Martins
Yasseri, Taha
author_facet Maimone, Victor Martins
Yasseri, Taha
author_sort Maimone, Victor Martins
collection PubMed
description 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.
format Online
Article
Text
id pubmed-8672071
institution National Center for Biotechnology Information
language English
publishDate 2021
publisher The Royal Society
record_format MEDLINE/PubMed
spelling pubmed-86720712021-12-16 Football is becoming more predictable; network analysis of 88 thousand matches in 11 major leagues Maimone, Victor Martins Yasseri, Taha R Soc Open Sci Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence 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. The Royal Society 2021-12-15 /pmc/articles/PMC8672071/ /pubmed/34925866 http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rsos.210617 Text en © 2021 The Authors. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Published by the Royal Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use, provided the original author and source are credited.
spellingShingle Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence
Maimone, Victor Martins
Yasseri, Taha
Football is becoming more predictable; network analysis of 88 thousand matches in 11 major leagues
title Football is becoming more predictable; network analysis of 88 thousand matches in 11 major leagues
title_full Football is becoming more predictable; network analysis of 88 thousand matches in 11 major leagues
title_fullStr Football is becoming more predictable; network analysis of 88 thousand matches in 11 major leagues
title_full_unstemmed Football is becoming more predictable; network analysis of 88 thousand matches in 11 major leagues
title_short Football is becoming more predictable; network analysis of 88 thousand matches in 11 major leagues
title_sort football is becoming more predictable; network analysis of 88 thousand matches in 11 major leagues
topic Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8672071/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34925866
http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rsos.210617
work_keys_str_mv AT maimonevictormartins footballisbecomingmorepredictablenetworkanalysisof88thousandmatchesin11majorleagues
AT yasseritaha footballisbecomingmorepredictablenetworkanalysisof88thousandmatchesin11majorleagues