Valuations of Soccer Players from Statistical Performance Data
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Radu S Tunaru
Based upon contingent claims methodology and standard techniques in statistical modeling and stochastic calculus, we develop a framework for determining the financial value of professional soccer players to their existing and potential new clubs. The model recognizes that a player's value is a product of a variety of factors, some of them more obvious (i.e. on-field performance, injuries, disciplinary record), and some of them less obvious (i.e. image rights or personal background). We provide numerical examples based upon historical statistical performance indicators that suggest the value of a soccer player is not the same for all potential clubs present in a market. In other words this is a special case where the law of one price for one asset does not function. Our modeling employs the vast database of soccer players' performance maintained by OPTA Sportsdata; the same database has been used by major clubs in the English Premiership such as Arsenal and Chelsea. From a statistical point of view, our model can be applied to identify the relative value of players with similar characteristics but different market valuations, to explore patterns of performance for individual star players and teams over a run of games, and to explore correlations or interactions between pairs of players or small groups of players on the team. Moreover, it offers a tool to value players from a financial point of view using their past performance; hence this model can be also used to inform contractual negotiations.
©2011 Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co. KG, Berlin/Boston
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Articles in the same Issue
- Conference Paper
- Predicting Overtime with the Pythagorean Formula
- Using Game Theory to Optimize Performance in a Best-of-N Set Match
- A Spatial Multidimensional Unfolding Choice Model for Examining the Heterogeneous Expressions of Sports Fan Avidity
- Anomalies in Tournament Design: The Madness of March Madness
- Skill Importance in Women's Volleyball
- Quantifying the Effect of Performance-Enhancing Drug Use on Fastball Velocity in Major League Baseball
- A New Iterative Method for Ranking College Football Teams
- Receiver Operating Characteristic (ROC) Curves for Measuring the Quality of Decisions in Cricket
- Visualization of Crew Race Performance: Drives and Duels
- Valuations of Soccer Players from Statistical Performance Data
- Measuring Risk in NFL Playcalling
- Using Random Forests and Simulated Annealing to Predict Probabilities of Election to the Baseball Hall of Fame
- The 2009 New England Symposium on Statistics in Sports
