The team batting second in a day-night cricket match faces different playing conditions to the team batting first. This paper quantifies the effect on the runscoring ability of the team batting second by using the difference in differences estimator. This approach indicates that batting during...

A double-elimination tournament is a competition where no participant is eliminated until they have lost two matches. It is structured as two single-elimination tournaments: the winner bracket and the loser bracket. Players who lose once in the winner bracket are mapped to positions in the loser...

In this paper, we empirically evaluate the predictive power of eight sports ranking methods. For each ranking method, we implement two versions, one using only win-loss data and one utilizing score-differential data. The methods are compared on 4 datasets: 32 National Basketball Association...

There is much interest in studying the hot hand behavior of individuals and teams in sports. We collect success/failure data for each of the hitters in a particular baseball season, focusing on the spacings or number of at-bats between consecutive successes. Consistent and streaky models are...

The Colley Matrix Rating System (CMRS) has been a component of the Bowl Championship Series (BCS) rankings. As such it is important that the assumptions that lead to and differentiate it from other rating systems be well understood. This work investigates an approach to justifying the CMRS based...

The convex payoff structure in professional golf rewards scoring volatility, giving rise to player types who succeed in spite of higher average scoring. The same risk incentives should influence all players to adjust risk strategies at key moments in tournaments when payoffs either crystallize...

Paired-comparison models have been previously used in the literature to assess the relative performance of tennis players over a given period of time. In this paper, I discuss how the rankings of tennis players can be modified to address variations in the importance of tennis tournaments, and...

This is the first paper to investigate factors that affect the size of the TV audience for the NCAA Men’s Final Four. The model is based on Nielsen data for 54 markets for 10 years. One of the most interesting results is that college basketball teams have a measurable effect in their local...

In this paper we apply survival techniques to soccer data, treating a goal scoring as the event of interest. It specifically concerns the relationship between the time of the first goal in the game and the time of the second goal. In order to do so, the relevant survival analysis concepts are...

Golf is a global sport with professional golfers playing on many organized tours throughout the world. The largest and most important tours for male professionals include the PGA Tour, European Tour, Japanese Tour and Asian Tour. The Official World Golf Ranking, or OWGR, is a system for ranking...