Accurate forecasts are essential in many areas such as business and sports forecasting. Prediction markets are a promising approach for forecasting future events and are increasingly used to aggregate information on particular future events of interest such as elections, sports events, and Oscar winners. In this paper, we present the results of an empirical study that compares the forecast accu...

OBJECTIVE To examine the use of medication of top-level male players during the 2014 FIFA World Cup Brazil. DESIGN Retrospective survey. PARTICIPANTS/INFORMATION 736 top level players. SETTING The teams' physicians disclosed a list of the medications used by each player within 72 h before each match of the 2014 FIFA World Cup Brazil. OUTCOME MEASURES Average number of medications used p...

Helsen et al. (2006) observed that during the 2002 FIFA World Cup 26.2% of all the offside situations were assessed incorrectly. For this reason, FIFA made a lot of efforts to decrease the errors when judging offside. The aim of the present study was to analyse all the offside situations during the 2006 World Cup and to make a comparison with the 2002 World Cup. Across the 64 matches, we analys...

BACKGROUND Precompetition screening was implemented for male referees during the 2010 Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA) Word Cup. In contrast, female football referees have been neglected in this respect although they experience similar physical work loads compared to male referees. METHODS The standardised football-specific pre-competition medical assessment (PCMA) was...

Enhanced surveillance for infectious disease events, with accelerated routine reporting and daily supplementary reports, was undertaken during the 2006 FIFA World Cup in Germany. We evaluated the surveillance outputs, reporting intervals and detection of World Cup-relevant events for the enhanced system. Outbreak numbers for measles, Norovirus and Campylobacter were significantly higher than in...

BACKGROUND FIFA has surveyed match injuries in its tournaments since 1998. AIM To analyse the incidence and characteristics of match injuries incurred during the 2014 FIFA World Cup in comparison to previous FIFA World Cups. METHODS The chief physicians of the participating teams reported all newly incurred injuries of their players after the match on a standardised report form. 124 (97%) f...

In 1994 Joseph S Blatter, President of the Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA), asked: “What can medicine and science do to improve the game of football?” Although a simple question, it led to the founding of the FIFA Medical Assessment and Research Centre (F-MARC) during the 1994 FIFA World Cup USA. The objective of F-MARC was to reduce football injuries at all levels of p...