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The Blog

What sports capitalism can teach us about real world fair play

24, 01, 14
6 Comments
  This article was written for CNN and was originally posted here   That sport has become a big business is a well-worn cliche. It also widely acknowledged that commercialism in sport is relatively recent phenomenon. Fifty years ago the majority of sports were organized on a
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World Cup Winners

17, 01, 14
4 Comments
Blogging has been interrupted a little by the revision of Soccernomics that Simon and I have been working on. For the revision we have updated most of the statistics in the book, and added a couple of new chapters. The US version is due out on Amazon on April 22nd, the UK version a fe
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The impact of English hooliganism on club performance

04, 11, 13
2 Comments
I have a new paper co-authored with Todd Jewell from the University of North Texas and Rob Simmons from the University of Lancaster about the impact of hooliganism on the performance of English clubs ( hooliganism_JSE_jewell_simmons_szymanski-26-3-2014), which got a nice write up from
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The England Football Team and the Premier League

15, 10, 13
3 Comments
So, for all the kerfuffle, England qualified for the 2014 World Cup with relative ease. Six wins and four draws, 31 goals scored and only 4 conceded, this looks like one of the better records of the qualifying teams. For example, only the Netherlands had a better goal difference in Eu
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Transfers, homegrown players and competitive balance

02, 09, 13
0 Comment
As we reach the transfer deadline and the bodies are being shipped to avoid the witching hour, it is worth reflecting on the importance of the transfer market to the success of teams. The wages that clubs pay their players is the best predictor of league performance, not because highe
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European football will never be the same again

20, 08, 13
6 Comments
This is an article I wrote for the FT which appeared in yesterday’s edition. They kindly gave me permission to reproduce it here. This will be the last year of European football as we know it. The “open” system by which the sport has long operated is now coming to an end, and wi
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The football rebellion in Brazil

30, 07, 13
5 Comments
This appeared in German on the Capital.de website yesterday The sight of protesters in Brazil outside the Maracana stadium in which the national team is about to play a championship final is what Americans would call a “game changer”. FIFA President Sepp Blatter might stick his head i
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Sport and doing the right thing

23, 07, 13
0 Comment
Last week I had a post about “walking” and cricket which suggested that the role of fans in determining the equilibrium choice (“walk” or “don’t walk”) was significantly affected by the attitude of fans. This week’s Economist mentioned a
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Fair is Foul and Foul is Fair: Scottish football again

22, 07, 13
58 Comments
Last year I wrote about the impact of sending Glasgow Rangers FC to play in Scottish Football League 3 after the company that owned the football club was liquidated last year. I described this as a “punishment” and argued that it was not a smart one, mainly because it was hurting the
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Sport, morals and the prisoner’s dilemma: an example from cricket

16, 07, 13
3 Comments
I hesitate to bring cricket to Soccernomics but the debate that occurred in the match between England and Australia that finished on Sunday raised an issue which appears in all sports. The issue surrounded the concept of “walking”. If a batsman in cricket hits the ball and it is caugh
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Welcome to The Blog

We hope it will be a venue for some of our new thinking on football, money and data. We wrote the book Soccernomics because we believed that systematic data analysis could tell us interesting things about football. Our collaboration is a match of science and art, matching the numbers to a convincing story, something which we have to do in our day-jobs as a journalist and an academic.

Soccernomics had done well in the UK, the US and around the world since it was published in 2009, and we published a second edition in the spring of 2012 with three new chapters telling more stories using yet more data. But there’s no reason to stop there. Thus far, researchers have only scratched the surface of the football data mines. One of the aims of this blog is to talk about some of the research that is going on, and some of the uses to which that data is being put. For this new project, we’re also joined by journalist and consultant Ben Lyttleton, our partner in the Soccernomics consultancy.


Contact Us

ben@soccernomics-agency.com

From the Blog

  • Abolition of the transfer system
  • Forecasting the final table for the Premier League 19/20 season: Revisited
  • Forecasting the final table for the Premier League 19/20 season
  • Covid-19 and football club insolvency
  • Soccer Analytics update

Soccernomics on Twitter

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Opinion we like

Anders Red

The Swiss Ramble

Roger Pielke, Jnr

The Sports Economist

John Beech

Zach Slaton

Football Economy

Soccer Analysts

Soccermetrics

A Beautiful Numbers Game

Zonal Marking

The Wages of Wins Journal

Int. Journal of Sport Finance

Rod Fort: Sports Monsters

Data we like

11v11

Football Observatory

RSSSF

European Football Statistics

Football Data

Football Squads

Neil Brown

Soccerbase

MUFPLC

League Managers

Manchester City Analytics

In The Media

Data Analysis at Big Clubs

Becks’ MLS Impact in The Sun

How Liverpool Misread Moneyball

On Racism in Football

NBC’S Premier League Rights Deal

Soccernomics on Baseball Site Honus