Multiple Ownership, Collusion and Unusual Result Patterns in Soccer

Expanding on the literature on antitrust, multiple ownership, and collusion in sports, this paper finds a very unusual result pattern between two clubs competing in the Croatian soccer league—Lokomotiva and Dinamo Zagreb. Their close sporting and business relationship has raised many questions about the possible collusion between them, potentially affecting the integrity of the competition. We analyze all matchups in the competition's 25‐year history to single out those characterized by biggest under‐ and overperformances by competing clubs. Our findings provide some support to the allegations of a possible collusion between the clubs as Lokomotiva's underperformance against Dinamo is so far in the tail of normal distribution that it has a lower occurrence probability than a random person being hit by lightning