ULMS370 Competitiveness in Football
First Half: Reading
This week’s core reading is:
Buraimo, B., & Simmons, R. (2008). Do sports fans really value uncertainty of outcome? Evidence from the English Premier League. International Journal of Sport Finance, 3(3)..
Please pay particular attention to the concept of match outcome uncertainty and how it is measured.
Please annotate, make notes, prepare any questions for class. What do we learn from the article regarding the following?
How probabilities for outcome are constructed?
How is match uncertainty of outcome measured?
What is the relationship between the different measures of match outcome uncertainty used in the paper?
Put forward at least one alternative measure of match outcome uncertainty.
ULMS370 Competitiveness in Football
Second Half: Data Analysis
The source of data for this exercise is www.football-data.co.uk. Complete the following steps and report your analysis and finding.
Download data for the 2022-23 season for the Premier League, the Championship, League One, League Two and the Conference from https://www.football-data.co.uk/englandm.php.
Using the data for the betting company B365 (note that there are many others), generate unadjusted probabilities for a home win, a draw and an away win in each match. This can be done by taking the reciprocal of the betting odds data in each of the columns: ‘B365H’, ‘B365D’, and ‘B365A’.
The reciprocal of is
In a separate column, add the values of the three reciprocals. On average, what is the sum? Why is the sum greater than 1? What are the implications of values less than 1?
In new columns, generate adjusted probabilities for the home win, the draw and the away win for each match. The sum of the adjusted probabilities for each match should sum to 1. The adjusted probabilities for the home win, the draw and the away win respectively are where is the adjusted probability for a home win and is the unadjusted probability for a home win. The other variables can be interpreted accordingly.
ULMS370 Competitiveness in Football
Now based on the adjusted probabilities, compute measures of match outcome uncertainty. These may follow those in the literature, but these could equally be of your own design. For example, a measure might be Based on 5 above, which of the five leagues delivers the highest levels of match uncertainty across the season?
Stoppage time: Other ways of measuring competitiveness
What are the fundamental flaws of match outcome uncertainty as a measure of competitiveness in football?
What alternative approaches and measures might overcome the flaws identified? APA.