Statistics Change Sports

European Football Championship is over, the Olympic Summer Games in Rio de Janeiro have begun. While public attention focuses on pompous opening ceremonies and arduous anti-doping campaigns, the use of statistical data in contemporary professional sports has been much less in the spotlight. Yet statistics can transform the sporting world. In a recently published conceptual article in the Journal of Cultural Economy, WZB Visiting Researcher Matthias Kranke  and his colleague David Yarrow (both University of Warwick) advance a performative understanding of sports statistics.

The authors take issue with common views that either see sports statistics as instruments for athletic development or as evidence of a further commercialisation. They instead argue that statistics do not simply represent the sporting world as it allegedly is, but also shape the ways in which sports is conducted. Why, for instance, have certain types of football players become more valuable than others? Why do so few tennis players serve and volley these days? How are statistics used to sell sport events to audiences? For the avid sports fan, the article offers new ideas that could help improve our understanding of how sports, especially at the professional level, evolve.

Yarrow, David and Kranke, Matthias (2016) ‘The performativity of sports statistics: towards a research agenda’, Journal of Cultural Economy, DOI:10.1080/17530350.2016.1202856: 1–13.