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Topic · Economics and Econometrics

Sports Analytics and Performance

Sports Analytics and Performance is a research topic within Economics and Econometrics. Science Explorer counts 24k research works in it since 1950. 10.2% of them reached the world's top 10% most cited for their field and year.

This cluster of papers focuses on the economics of professional sports, including topics such as prediction markets, competitive balance, referee bias, home advantage, superstar effects, labor market dynamics, the gambler’s fallacy, revenue sharing, and market efficiency in the context of sporting contests.

  • Prediction Markets
  • Competitive Balance
  • Referee Bias
  • Home Advantage
  • Superstar Effects
  • Labor Market
  • Gambler’s Fallacy
  • Sporting Contests
  • Revenue Sharing
  • Market Efficiency
Research works
24k
fractional, since 1950
In the world top 10%
2.4k
per year above
Top-10% rate
10.2%
share of its works in the world top 10%
Growth, 2018-21 → 2022-25
+29%
the tick is no change
Largest producer
United States
33% of the 10 largest, 2022-now
Sports Analytics and Performance

Which countries lead Sports Analytics and Performance research?

By volume, the United States and China publish the most (1.3k and 682 works in 2022-now).

By volume, 2022-now

  1. 1 United States 1.3k works
  2. 2 China 682 works
  3. 3 United Kingdom 394 works
  4. 4 India 345 works
  5. 5 Germany 304 works
  6. 6 Spain 224 works
  7. 7 Türkiye 223 works
  8. 8 Australia 170 works
  9. 9 Brazil 167 works
  10. 10 Canada 161 works

How concentrated that is

The same countries as shares of everything the list above accounts for. A node where two countries do two thirds of the work and one spread evenly across twelve read alike as a ranking and not at all alike here.

United States: 33.2%China: 17.1%United Kingdom: 9.9%India: 8.6%6 others listed: 31.3%33%largest
United States1,325 · 33.2%China682 · 17.1%United Kingdom394 · 9.9%India345 · 8.6%6 others listed1,250 · 31.3%

Shares of the rows listed above, not of the whole node.

Which institutions lead Sports Analytics and Performance research?

By volume in 2022-now, American Society of Genealogists publishes the most Sports Analytics and Performance research, followed by German Sport University Cologne and Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique.

By volume, 2022-now

  1. 1 American Society of GenealogistsUnited States 203 works
  2. 2 German Sport University CologneGermany 48 works
  3. 3 Centre National de la Recherche ScientifiqueFrance 25 works
  4. 4 Beijing Sport UniversityChina 20 works
  5. 5 Loughborough UniversityUnited Kingdom 19 works
  6. 6 University of MichiganUnited States 17 works
  7. 7 Shanghai University of SportChina 16 works
  8. 8 New York UniversityUnited States 15 works
  9. 9 Syracuse UniversityUnited States 15 works
  10. 10 University of MünsterGermany 14 works

Who are the leading researchers in Sports Analytics and Performance?

The most-cited researchers publishing on Sports Analytics and Performance include Amos Tversky, Martin McKee and Kai You Wang.

  1. 1 Amos Tversky United States 327k citations
  2. 2 Martin McKee United Kingdom 270k citations
  3. 3 Kai You Wang China 224k citations
  4. 4 Albert-Ĺaszló Barabási United States 223k citations
  5. 5 Marko Sarstedt Germany 221k citations
  6. 6 Ilya Sutskever Canada 219k citations
  7. 7 Tim Driscoll Australia 204k citations

Ranked by citations received across their whole record, among researchers with at least three works on this topic.

What are the most cited papers in Sports Analytics and Performance?

The most cited paper in Sports Analytics and Performance is "Mastering the game of Go with deep neural networks and tree search" (David Lawrence Silver, Aja Huang, Chris J. Maddison et al., 2016), with 16,121 citations. Next come "Evaluating Online Labor Markets for Experimental Research: Amazon.com's Mechanical Turk" (4,118) and "A Survey of Monte Carlo Tree Search Methods" (3,032).

Most cited papers
#PaperReleasedCitations
1 Mastering the game of Go with deep neural networks and tree search David Lawrence Silver, Aja Huang, Chris J. Maddison et al. · Nature 26 Jan 2016 16,121
2 Evaluating Online Labor Markets for Experimental Research: Amazon.com's Mechanical Turk Adam J. Berinsky, Gregory A. Huber, Gabriel Lenz · Political Analysis Open access 2012 4,118
3 A Survey of Monte Carlo Tree Search Methods Cameron Browne, Edward J. Powley, Daniel Whitehouse et al. · IEEE Transactions on Computational Intelligence and AI in Games 3 Feb 2012 3,032
4 Learning to predict by the methods of temporal differences Richard S. Sutton · Machine Learning Open access Aug 1988 2,826
5 Games with Incomplete Information Played by “Bayesian” Players, I–III: Part I. The Basic Model John C. Harsanyi · Management Science Dec 2004 2,173
All 100 most cited papers, with filters and sorting

Where is Sports Analytics and Performance research done?

The largest centres of Sports Analytics and Performance research in 2022-now are Sharon (United States), Beijing (China), London (United Kingdom) and Tokyo (Japan). Among places with at least 20 works in it, it is an unusually large share of all research in Sharon.

Largest cities, 2022-now

  1. 1 SharonUnited States 203 works
  2. 2 BeijingChina 119 works
  3. 3 LondonUnited Kingdom 75 works
  4. 4 TokyoJapan 64 works
  5. 5 ShanghaiChina 59 works
  6. 6 CologneGermany 50 works
  7. 7 New YorkUnited States 49 works
  8. 8 MelbourneAustralia 44 works
  9. 9 SeoulSouth Korea 44 works
  10. 10 MadridSpain 43 works

Where it is the local speciality

  1. SharonUS · 202.7 works325×
← less than its size predicts1×more →

Location quotient: how much more of its research is in Sports Analytics and Performance than the world average.

See Sports Analytics and Performance on the map

Where is the best place to study Sports Analytics and Performance?

Among universities, judged by research, German Sport University Cologne, Universidad Politécnica de Madrid and Northumbria University score highest, combining excellence, specialisation, size, growth and international reach. Research strength is one signal when choosing where to study; it does not measure teaching.

0%20%40%mean 24.1%fractional works in this field (log) →share of work in the world top 10% →Northumbria UniversityUniversidad Politécn…Loughborough Univers…German Sport Univers…
above the meannear itbelow it

One dot per university in the first ten of the table below, at the default weights. The upper left is the interesting corner: small places doing unusually strong work.

Excellenceshare of its work in the world top 10%, 2022-now and all time averaged
40%
Specialisationhow much of its work is in this field, counted up to 10× the world share
10%
Sizeits output in this field, on a log scale
30%
Growthoutput growth, counted from -20% to +20%
10%
Internationalshare of its work with a co-author abroad
10%
Each slider sets a weight; the share it gets of the score is beside it.
#UniversityScoreTop 10%SpecialisationWorksGrowth
1German Sport University CologneGermany 78.014.7%161.9×48 +52.9%
2Universidad Politécnica de MadridSpain 72.126.5%7.8×13 +15.4%
3Northumbria UniversityUnited Kingdom 71.236.6%8.4×10 +148.7%
4Loughborough UniversityUnited Kingdom 62.718.0%15.3×19 +12.9%
5Deakin UniversityAustralia 59.526.7%4.5×10 +18.3%
6Victoria UniversityAustralia 57.630.8%18.9×8 -48.5%
7University of WaterlooCanada 57.518.7%4.5×13 +101.3%
8Corvinus University of BudapestHungary 57.223.1%25.0×12 +55.3%
9Manchester Metropolitan UniversityUnited Kingdom 57.027.0%14.6×12 -11.8%
10Leeds Beckett UniversityUnited Kingdom 56.718.9%27.5×11 +48.9%

Universities only. The score blends excellence (40%), size (30%), specialisation (10%), growth (10%), international reach (10%), 2022-now; growth compares 2018-21 with 2022-25 and counts up to +20%, since a jump from a small base is mostly noise.

Every institution in Sports Analytics and Performance, country by country

Is Sports Analytics and Performance research growing?

Output in 2022-2025 was 29% higher than in 2018-2021, peaking in 2024. The fastest-growing topics are Sports Analytics and Performance.

still counting19801990200020102020
grewheldshrank

The same series as a ribbon: one cell per year, darker for more. The line above answers how much; this answers when.

Its share of all research

Growing output can still be a shrinking share: all of science grows. This is Sports Analytics and Performance as a percentage of every work published that year, 0.026% in 2024.

still counting0.010%0.020%0.030%Sports Analytics and Performance0.024% in 202519801990200020102020

Fractional works of Sports Analytics and Performance over all fractional works that year. How the balance of science has shifted.

How much of it reaches the world top 10%

Year by year.

still counting5%10%15%Sports Analytics and Performance10.7% in 2025200020102020

Of each year's works in it, the share that reached the world's 10% most cited for their field and year. A field is the world for its own topics, so there is no other line to hold it against.

Which topics inside it are moving

Growth and decline on one axis around a shared zero. Two lists side by side hide the thing that matters: whether the growth dwarfs the decline, or the other way round.

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