We present an extensive statistical analysis of the results of all sports competitions in five major sports leagues in England and the United States. We characterize the parity among teams by the variance in the winning fraction from season-end standings data and quantify the predictability of games by the frequency of upsets from game results data. We introduce a mathematical model in which th...

This paper explores the impact of professional sports teams and stadiums on employment and earnings in specific sectors in US cities. Previous research focused on aggregate measures of income or employment. We find that professional sports have a small positive effect on earnings per employee in one sector, amusements and recreation, and an offsetting decrease in both earnings and employment in...

From the viewpoint of networks, a ranking system for players or teams in sports is equivalent to a centrality measure for sports networks, whereby a directed link represents the result of a single game. Previously proposed network-based ranking systems are derived from static networks, i.e., aggregation of the results of games over time. However, the score of a player (or team) fluctuates over ...

Using data from professional baseball, basketball, and hockey, we estimate the parameters of a sequential game model of best-of-n championship series controlling for measured and unmeasured differences in team strength and bootstrapping the maximum-likelihood estimates to improve their small sample properties. We find negligible strategic effects in all three sports: teams play as well as possi...

The purpose of this study was to investigate Paralympic coaches' perceptions of team cohesion. Seven head coaches of summer and winter Canadian Paralympic sport teams participated in the study. Four participants coached individual sports and 3 coached team sports. Data were collected using semistructured interviews and analyzed using thematic analysis. The results addressed the coaches' percept...

It is often believed that the Olympic Games have become more migratory. The number of Olympic athletes representing countries in which they weren't born is thought to be on the rise. It should, however, be noted that migration in the context of sports is hardly a new phenomenon. In this paper we hypothesise that, as a reflection of global migration patterns and trends, the number of foreign-bor...

In order to do this extensive use of mathematics is used, which might make the text more difficult to read, but ensures the method is well documented and reproducible by others, who might want to use it or derive another ranking method from it. The report is, on the other hand, also more detailed than a ”typical” scientific paper and discusses details, which in a scientific paper intended for p...

Sailing medicine has been mainly addressed by healthcare professionals who happen to sail. Although there has been an increase in the number of studies of various aspects of sailing over the last 15 years, efforts to advance evidence based knowledge of sailing and sports medicine face unique obstacles. Recent interest in research by groups such as Olympic and America's Cup teams has produced be...