Disciplinary Sanctions in English Premiership Football: Is There a Racial Dimension?

This paper assesses the evidence for racial differences in the accumulation of disciplinary sanctions in professional football using data drawn from five recent seasons of the English Premiership. A relatively rich data source was used to construct a unique dataset for this study. The data have the significant advantage of being able to identify, inter alia, the player’s age, club, field position, number of games played, time played per game, and the number of disciplinary cards received. These data were merged with data from other sources to identify the racial affiliation of the player across four separate categories (viz., white, black, mixed race, and Asian). On the basis of our preferred econometric approach, no evidence of unfair treatment of players from racial minority groups in the accumulation of disciplinary cards.