This monthly article contains the top 10 short researches that our Research Analysts publish on Statathlon’s Social Media every day. This month’s wrap up contains various topics: Referee’s contribution, CBA stats, Sumo wrestling, NBA uncovered facts and many more…

Data Analysis

4/12/2017: Among the top European Leagues, Bundesliga has the greatest average attendance with 45.359 spectators per match. Premier League comes 2nd (38.435), when La Liga is 3rd (27.538), Serie A is 4th (24.775) and Ligue 1 is 5th (22.396).

However, when the interest goes to the fullness of the stadiums, Premier League comes 1st, as its fullness percentage surpasses 95%. Bundesliga has the 2nd fullest stadiums, with a bit less than 93%. The most unexpected finding is that Serie A has the worst record of fullness so far, with 62%. Ligue 1 has 68% (4th) and La Liga has approximately 72% (3rd).

The major factor which affects significantly the fullness percentage in each case is the average capacity of the stadiums. Bundesliga has the highest number of sheets per stadium (48.829), when the rest standing is the following: Premier League (40.416) 2nd, La Liga (38.447) 3rd, Serie A (39.897) 4th and Ligue 1 (32.818) 5th.

11/12/2017: Ol. Langford (13 matches) and K. Stroud (10 matches) are the top two referees based on average scored goals in a single match in current season of EFL Championship (2017/18).

In the games that Mr. Langford has been whistled the average goals were 3.15 and in the games that Mr. Stroud has whistled the average goals were 3.2.

Data Science techniques could help a researcher calculate the exact possibilities about the scored goals for the upcoming matches using the Poisson model – λ=mean.

The possibilities regarding the scored goals in the upcoming matches for Mr. Langford are the following:

0 goals: 0.043
1 goal: 0.135
2 goals: 0.212
3 goals: 0.223
4 goals: 0.176
5+ goals: 0.221

The estimated goals according to Poisson model for Mr. Stroud are the following:

0 goals: 0.041
1 goal: 0.130
2 goals: 0.209
3 goals: 0.223
4 goals: 0.178
5+ goals: 0.219

24/12/2017: In the list of active sumo wrestlers the majority comes from Japan (70%). The other country with many representatives is Mongolia with 17,91%. Russia and Georgia have two sumo wrestlers and Bulgaria, Brazil, Egypt and China have one.

The heaviest sumo is from Russia and weighs 288 kg, while the minimum weight of an active sumo is 115 kg. The average weight of these active sumo wrestlers is 160,7 kg. The average height of them is 183 cm. The taller has height 1,98 m and the shorter 1,71 m.

26/12/2017: The Asian-oriented efforts for commercial relations with the European football market remain intensive in recent years. The sponsorships constitute an alternative way to participate in a European club indirectly, apart from the acquisition of them from financial funding groups based on Qatar, UAE, China or Philippines.

This fact is increasingly confirmed lately, by observing the origin of the main sponsorships on the kits of all Premier League clubs, during the current season. Τhe 55% of the main sponsors on the clubs’ kits originates from Asia. The percentage of the American sponsors is considerably smaller, only 10%, when the European do not surpass the 30%. In this case, the paradox is that Everton is the only Premier League club that has an African sponsor in its kit (5%), originated from Kenya, while the UK sponsorships comprise the 1/5 of the overall number. The majority of these sponsors operate in online gambling, airlines and insurance.

On the contrary, the situation is totally different in La Liga. Among the 20 clubs of the league, there are six of them without any sponsor in the main part of their kits. The 64% of the clubs that have a sponsor comes from Europe, while the percentage of the Asian and American is 29% and 7%, respectively. The 1/3 of the total number of sponsors comes from Spain and it is divided in many different sectors of the global market. Las Palmas is the only club that it is sponsored by public authority (local government of Canary Islands).

27/12/2017: Mohamed Salah has a tremendous season so far. Klopp’s Liverpool was the right club for him to improve his stats. In Premier League he has 3,8 shots per game and in Champions League 4,8. Last time he was trying more than 3 shots per game was in 2014-15 season with Fiorentina (3,3). He does 2,8 dribbles per game, but in Fiorentina he was doing 3,8.

He has career highs in Crosses (0,7) and Long Balls (0,7). Also, offensive career highs with 1,7 shots per game out of box, 2,8 shots inside penalty area (excluding six yard box), 2,3 shots on target and 0,8 goals per game.

28/12/2017: CBA, China’s first – tier men basketball league is the most developing league outside United States and Europe. Many high – profile American and European players had joined one of the 20 participating clubs the last years, such as Tracy McGrady, Gilbert Arenas and Michael Beasley.

The big amount of money that team owners are willing to offer to foreign players, as well as the opportunity to spend approximately only half of the year in China (since regular season ends in mid February) have attracted many of them. 37 out of 41 international players (90.2%) were former NBA or Euroleague Basketball athletes, including players like Luis Scola, Ty Lawson, Stephon Marbury and Giannis Bourousis.

What is more interesting about CBA, is the team and individual records that take place. Average team offence is 106.87 PPG, while Darius Adams is the leader in PPG with 40.30 points and Jared Sullinger in RPG with 17.75 rebounds. Back in 2015, Erick McCollum scored 82 points in a single game.

18/12/2017: Scottish Premier League has a very interesting Corner Kick statistical distribution this season (2017/18).

Using the dataset from the first 17 matchdays the average corner kicks per match are 11.176. For the home team the average Corner Kicks are 11.049 and for the away team 5.421.

The interesting part is the huge difference between the matches with at least one goal and matches without any goal. Basic Descriptive statistics shows that in matches with one or more goals the average corner kicks are 10.460 while in matches without any goal the average Corner Kicks are less than one (0.715).

30/12/2017: Vince Carter, Jason Terry and Manu Ginobili are the oldest players in the NBA (40 years old). The last trend of statistics in NBA are those which present the most hustle players.

These three stay on the court for 15, 11 and 21 minutes respectively. The Argentinian has 2.2 deflections per game and “Jet” 1. These numbers are significant for their team, concerning their minutes per game. In the top of this category is Paul George with 4.9. Moreover Vince Carter contest 3,7 shots per game, Ginobili 2,5 and Terry 1,8. Brook Lopez has the most contested shots with 13,5.

The leaders of other “hustle” categories are Marcin Gortat and Andre Drummond in screens that led to a bucket with 5 per game and Kyle Lowry in “charges drawn” with 0,59.

Bio-athletics

6/12/2017: A few months ago, scientists diagnosed Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy (CTE) in a living person for the first time. This is a major development that will hopefully enable scientists to cure this patience.

CTE develops from repeated hits to head and is very common to american football players. It causes brain weight reduction and atrophy.

In a recently published study, 110 out of 111 deceased former NFL players had been found with CTE in their brains. For this reason, in 2015 NFL reached a 1 billion dollars agreement with former players to cover the costs of those kind of diseases.

21/12/2017: In 2013, SAP software corporation and WTA (Women’s Tennis Association) signed a partnership deal that has changed significantly the way players and their coaches approach each game.

After a few years of development, in 2015 SAP launched a software that collects and processes real – time statistics during games and provides coaches with useful analytics in order to optimize their strategy, based on historical and live data. Some of the statistics provided are player’s service performance, serve direction and number of break points saved.

This innovative and revolutionary idea is based on two of the most upcoming trends in technology lately, Data Analysis and Machine Learning. The next step for SAP and WTA is the launch of a similar software for media in 2018.

• Become a fan of Statathlon’s Facebook page
• Follow us on LinkedIn
• Follow us on Twitter