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American football is unique in that offensive and defensive units typically consist of separate players who don't share the field simultaneously, which tempts one to evaluate them independently. However, a team's offensive and defensive…
Scientifically evaluating soccer players represents a challenging Machine Learning problem. Unfortunately, most existing answers have very opaque algorithm training procedures; relevant data are scarcely accessible and almost impossible to…
Cricket betting is a multi-billion dollar market. Therefore, there is a strong incentive for models that can predict the outcomes of games and beat the odds provided by bookers. The aim of this study was to investigate to what degree it is…
While methods for measuring and correcting differential performance in risk prediction models have proliferated in recent years, most existing techniques can only be used to assess fairness across relatively large subgroups. The purpose of…
Elite football is believed to have evolved in recent years, yet systematic evidence for the pace and form of that change remains sparse. Drawing on event-level records for 13,018 matches across ten top-tier men's and women's leagues in…
In December 2023 the Florida State Seminoles became the first Power 5 school to have an undefeated season and miss selection for the College Football Playoff. In order to assess this decision, we employed an Elo ratings model to rank the…
We consider the use of no-regret algorithms to compute equilibria for particular classes of convex-concave games. While standard regret bounds would lead to convergence rates on the order of $O(T^{-1/2})$, recent work \citep{RS13,SALS15}…
We consider the task of determining a football player's ability for a given event type, for example, scoring a goal. We propose an interpretable Bayesian model which is fit using variational inference methods. We implement a Poisson model…
The standard mixture modeling framework has been widely used to study heterogeneous populations, by modeling them as being composed of a finite number of homogeneous sub-populations. However, the standard mixture model assumes that each…
We introduce a class of extensive form games where players might not be able to foresee the possible consequences of their decisions and form a model of their opponents which they exploit to achieve a more profitable outcome. We improve…
This paper introduces a score-driven rating system, a generalization of the classical Elo rating system that employs the score, i.e. the gradient of the log-likelihood, as the updating mechanism for player and team ratings. The proposed…
Statistical modelling of sports data has become more and more popular in the recent years and different types of models have been proposed to achieve a variety of objectives: from identifying the key characteristics which lead a team to win…
Forecasting sporting events encapsulate a compelling intellectual endeavor, underscored by the substantial financial activity of an estimated $80 billion wagered in global sports betting during 2022, a trend that grows yearly. Motivated by…
The recent growth in data availability in football has increased the risk of incorrect use of data-driven models, making guidelines on their validation and application necessary. The Expected Threat (xT) model is an accessible option for…
We consider the task of determining the number of chances a soccer team creates, along with the composite nature of each chance-the players involved and the locations on the pitch of the assist and the chance. We propose an interpretable…
One of the most important and challenging problems in football is predicting future player performance when transferred to another club within and between different leagues. In addition to being the most valuable prediction a team makes, it…
With the development of measurement technology, data on the movements of actual games in various sports can be obtained and used for planning and evaluating the tactics and strategy. Defense in team sports is generally difficult to be…
The League Championship Algorithm (LCA) is sport-inspired optimization algorithm that was introduced by Ali Husseinzadeh Kashan in the year 2009. It has since drawn enormous interest among the researchers because of its potential efficiency…
The Elo algorithm, renowned for its simplicity, is widely used for rating in sports tournaments and other applications. However, despite its widespread use, a detailed understanding of the convergence characteristics of the Elo algorithm is…
We undertake extensive analysis of English Premier League data over the period 2009/10 to 2017/18 to identify and rank key factors affecting the economic and footballing performances of the teams. Alternative end-of-season league tables are…