Posts Tagged ‘World Cup 2010’

Castrol Edge penalty analysis. Players will have to think from now on twice, before taking a penalty!

Sunday, July 4th, 2010

In a previous blog post we have presented a new Castrol football application, the World Cup Predictor. Using performance data from every international match played by the World Cup 2010 participating teams in the last ten years and simulating the tournament more than 100 000 times, to minimize the error rate as much as possible, the Castrol team of performance analysts calculated each team’s chances of progression through the competition.
As it proves, the application has its validity,  Brazil the team identified by the Castrol Predictor as the most likely winners still running in the competition, while England the team that was predicted to win the world cup competition by the JP Morgan analysts is already out being eliminated by Germany.

To find out more about what are your favorite team chances to win the next match from the knock out rounds use the Castrol Match Predictor application by clicking on the image below.

Source: Castrol Football, 2010

Additionally, for the knock out stages Castrol Football just launched a new application that proves to be of great interest among fans, but also among players and goalkeepers still involved in the knockout stages of the World Cup competition.

As Peter Schmeichel, one of the official Castrol ambassadors acknowledge, the Penalty Analysis application gives complete historic information about the way and style a field player takes a penalty, but also about the strategy each goalkeeper use when defending a penalty. To view more details you can listen the complete interview with the ex goalkeeper Peter Schmeichel in the podcast below.

Castrol EDGE Penalty Analysis Podcast by Castrol Football

For developing the new application, the Castrol team of performance analysts has studied every penalty taken in the last 4 seasons of the top five European Leagues and UEFA Champions Leagues, as well as a number of international matches and they compiled the results in an application that can be accessed by clicking the image below.

Source: Castrol Football, 2010

More than that, especially for the World Cup 2010 tournament, the Castrol team of performance analysts analyzed each penalty taken in the last 5 World Cups both during matches and penalty shootouts by all teams who qualified for the South African competition to better understand the psychological impact the penalty shootouts pressure have on field players and goalkeepers. The results are truly surprising:

  • 81% of the penalties taken during the matches are converted while only 66% during the penalty shoot outs
  • Players who go first in penalty shootouts are 7 times more likely to score than those executing the penalties last
  • The older a player is the less likely he will score – only 71% of those above 28 years scored
  • Right foot players have a 69% penalty conversion rate, while left foot players only 50%
  • Goalkeepers wearing green jerseys let through 62 % of the penalties, those wearing black 65%, blue 69%, while goalkeepers wearing red jersey couldn’t save any penalty
  • Strikers with a penalty conversion result of 74% are most likely to score, followed by defenders with a 69% success rate, while midfielder are the most unlikely to score with a 58%  success figure attached.
  • Finally, only 40% of penalties are converted by players if the team final survival depends on that penalty, while 92% of penalties are converted in the opposite situation, when the penalty is to decide the winner.

To view a full video presentation of the Castrol performance analysts research you can follow the Castrol Football official site here.

References:

Additional resources:

Tags: , , , , ,
Posted in Business Intelligence, Events, Performance Management, Podcast, smartKPIs.com | No Comments »

Enhancing business performance with intelligent data visualization – Ideas from sport

Monday, June 28th, 2010

Data presentation and visualization solutions have increased in popularity in the recent years. Tremendous advancements in information technology and the wide adoption of the internet had a positive effect on communication, data interchange and visualization across networks, business and social communities.

Driven by the business need of analyzing large volumes of data and presenting them in a concentrated, transparent and easy to read form, data visualization instruments such as dashboard solutions register nowadays an increased level of adoption in several activity fields.

Sport is one of them, and particularly those competitions with a large following all over the world, such as football, basketball, tennis, cricket, baseball or golf. These sports are benefiting from a wide variety of data presentations and visualization applications which enable a closer and easier connections with fans.

Only in the last month, once with the start off the World Cup South Africa 2010 a variety of presentation and visualization solutions were launched, slicing and dicing all competition details and data. An excellent visualization solution is presented by Marca.com:

Source: Marca.com, 2010

What is interesting though, is that what we are witnessing today in the data visualization field  is sort of an “echolocation effect”: ideas bounce back from business to sports and business again.  Such complex data visualization applications, as the one presented in the image above, which were first inspired from business visualization and representation solutions can be used now back as sources of inspirations for a more creative business data visualization solutions.

References:

Marca.com (2010), World Cup South Africa 2010 interactive calendar, available at http://www.marca.com/deporte/futbol/mundial/sudafrica-2010/calendario-english.html, (accessed 25 June 2010)

Tags: , , , ,
Posted in Business Intelligence, Data visualization, Events | No Comments »

World Cup 2010 and social media performance – England goalkeeper Robert Green’s mistake attracts social media attention!

Wednesday, June 23rd, 2010

A shocking error from the England’s goalkeeper Robert Green, earned the U.S.A. squad a 1-1 draw in the first match of the South Africa World Cup 2010 group stage.

The goalkeeper blunder, as outlined by one of the latest Nielsen (2010) analysis, triggered unexpected levels of reactions in the social media from England and USA, but with however contrasting effect in the overall buzz level changes from the two countries.

The analysis outlines the share of online buzz, in English language social media talks surrounding U.S and English national team players related to the 2010 World Cup squads. (Nielsen Wire, 2010)

The analysis is based on two performance indicators:

• % Player buzz in the social media

• % Change in overall buzz levels

USA and England Soccer Player Buzz Rankings, at  14 June 2010

Source: Nielsen Wire, 2010

As the Nielsen analysis  outlines, two major reactions were registered in the social media talks after the England vs. USA game from the World Cup 2010, both having english goalkeeper Robert Green’s stunning mistake as a trigger point.

On the one hand, the mistake, who upset almost 50 million English fans, pulled the goalkeeper out from obscurity in the social media spotlight (Nielsen Wire, 2010). Newspaper titles such as “hand of clod”, “cock –up keeper Green wrecks dream start” “tainted glove” or “worst howler ever”, triggered a storm of discussions on social media forums that earned Robert Green an 11.4 % buzz share and the first spot in the Nielsen rankings ahead of more famous team mate Wayne Rooney.

On the other hand, this unfortunate and costly mistake for the England soccer team produced a 21 % drop in the overall social media discussions around the squad, reflecting the general disappointment of the English nation. In stark contrast, same mistake  produced a 250% increase in the social media discussions round the USA team, as the Nielsen analyst suggest.

Overall, it appears that a simple mistake from a goalkeeper has the power to ignite, through social media channels, the hearts and minds of USA fans, bringing this sport into spotlight in a country where baseball, ice hockey , american football or basketball are the major sport attractions.

References:

Additional resources:

Tags: , , , , , ,
Posted in KPI, Performance Measurement | No Comments »

Econometrics and the most significant World Cup performance value drivers

Tuesday, June 22nd, 2010

In two previous blog posts we have presented different methodologies incorporating a variety of correlations, constructed by consultants from Goldman Sachs and J.P Morgan to determine the most probable winners of the World Cup 2010.

Today we will bring to your attention a third perspective, an econometric model adapted by PricewaterhouseCoopers consultants for analyzing the most influential drivers of World Cup performance and determine which are the most likely national teams to win this year’s World Cup edition.

For calculating the econometric model 2 broader measures for national performance in football were taken into consideration:

• Total World Cup Points ever gained at a final tournament, where one victory counts for 3 points and a draw for 1

• Total FIFA World Ranking points

Source: PricewaterhouseCoopers, 2010

These 2 main measures were than separately correlated in the econometric model developed with what were considered to be three of the most important external drivers of world cup performance.

• Gross Domestic Product (GDP) per capita

• Population size

• Host country advantage

The results of the econometric analysis showed out that while population size and gross domestic product are statistically insignificant for determining the most probable winners of the World Cup, the two constants from the model, the historic World Cup performance and the FIFA world ranking together with the host country advantage driver demonstrated to be the most important factors that count for determining the World Cup winners.

More than that, the advantage of the host country seems to have a highly significant positive effect in determining the teams who will have good performance at the World Cup. Host crowd support and familiar climate conditions are probably two significant factors in that respect.

As the table below shows, only the Spanish team outperformed at the 1982 World Cups, the hosts of the other World Cup editions having decent, if not even brilliant performances. Thus, countries such as Ghana, Nigeria or South Africa are likely to have good performances at the World Cup 2010 edition, even though it is hardly believable that they will be able to win the tournament.

Source: PricewaterhouseCoopers, 2010

Finally, according with the three most important drivers or determinants of World Cup performance, as showed by the PricewaterhouseCoopers econometric model, Brazil is the most likely team to win the World Cup. It is ranked on the first place both in the Historical World Cup performance ranking and in the FIFA World rankings and is the only team who has ever won a world cup title outside of its own continent.

References:

Additional resources:

Tags: , , , ,
Posted in Events, KPI, Performance Measurement, smartKPIs.com | No Comments »

World Cup South Africa 2010 – most buzzed players in the social media

Monday, June 21st, 2010

As one of the latest Nielsen (2010) studies related to World Cup 2010 reveal, the most buzzed player in the social media is the Ivory Coast striker and star player Didier Drogba (3.40%). He is followed quite at a long distance by the Netherlands star Arjen Robben (1.60%), with Argentinean and world best player in 2009, Lionel Messi on the third spot (1.40%), and Portuguese playmaker Cristiano Ronaldo on the fourth position only (1.10%).

The study was conducted in the week previous to the start of the South Africa World Cup 2010 and looked at all World Cup related messages on blogs, message boards, groups, videos and image sites including You Tube, Facebook or Twitter – that mentioned at least one of 345 leading players related to the squads that qualified for the World Cup 2010 (Nielsen Wire, 2010).

The indicator that was used to measure this analysis results was: % Selected player Buzz in the social media

Source: Nielsen Wire, 2010

What is striking, is that most of the pre World-Cup player social media buzz was dominated by player injuries talk, while names such as those of the world football stars Wayne Rooney, Cristiano Ronaldo or Lionel Messi caught up frontline positions only due to the players leading roles in the Nike and Pepsi advertising campaigns, about which we talked in a previous blog post: South Africa 2010 FIFA World Cup Social media fever – the most viewed ads on YouTube.

References:

Additional resources:

Tags: , , , , ,
Posted in KPI, Measure, Performance Measurement | No Comments »

Castrol Index and the World Cup South Africa 2010

Saturday, June 19th, 2010

In a previous blog post “Performance in sport: a new era has began” we reviewed the ascent of sport in popular culture, bringing together entertainment, business and healthcare. Football in particular became in the last two decades a veritable industry that started to attract increased attention from analysts and media.

The Castrol Index and Ranking System is the world’s first ranking program based on the actual performance of football players. Using the latest technology to objectively analyze each player’s performance on the pitch, the Castrol Index tracks every move of each player during a game and assess whether it has a positive or negative impact on a team’s ability to score or concede a goal. In doing so, an index of more than 20 performance measures, such as: assists, blocked shot, duels won, minutes played, passing accuracy or shots on target are used.

Being an official partner of the  World Cup South Africa 2010, Castrol through Castrol Football have recently launched a  several new features that were added to the old Ranking System. Fans from all over the world are able now to assess the performance of their favorite players and teams present at the World Cup.

Source: Castrol Football, 2010

Additionally, FIFA World Cup Predictor functionality allows fans to visualize each team’s chances of progression through the tournament, providing with insights into how a particularly team will fare in the group, who they will face in the knock out stages and ultimately their chance to win the World Cup.

To give an example we have choose England as a case study for a complete presentation of the FIFA World Cup Predictor  main features or characteristics. However, while being into the online application you can view predictions for any of the 32 participating teams at the World Cup 2010.

1. Success Predictor: How far is your team likely to progress in the 2010 World Cup?

Source: Castrol Football, 2010

2. Group Predictor: How will your team perform in their group?

Source: Castrol Football, 2010

3. Match Predictor: What are your team’s chance of beating its World Cup rivals?

Source: Castrol Football, 2010

4. Opponent Predictor: Who is your team most likely to play with  in the knockout stages?

Source: Castrol Football, 2010

5. Tournament Predictor: Which teams are likely to progress to the later stages and who will they play with?

Source: Castrol Football, 2010

6. World Cup 2010 Winner Predictor: Who is most likely to win the 2010 World Cup?

Source: Castrol Football, 2010

The Castrol Index and Ranking System makes football performance measurement easier. Debates such as who is a better player or which team payed better now have an analytical based answer…In the new edition of the Castrol blog post series we will present a new feature of the Index, which is about to be released soon, by Castrol Football, during the knock out stages of the World Cup 2010: the Castrol Edge Penalty Analysis!

References:

Additional resources:

Tags: , , ,
Posted in Events, KPI, Performance Measurement | No Comments »

Investment bankers views on the 2010 World Cup South Africa – England likely to win the World Cup

Thursday, June 17th, 2010

In a previous blog post we presented the Goldman Sachs Investment Research Division report on “The World Cup and Economics 2010″. Besides forecasting football scores and rankings, the report also presents some interesting correlations between the FIFA world rankings and two economic indicators: Gross National Product (GNP) per capita and Growth Environment Scores (GES).

In today’s post we  present a second report on World Cup 2010, currently released by J.P. Morgan Europe Equity Research Division.

The J.P. Morgan report “A Quantitative Guide to the 2010 World Cup” predicts that according to the forecasting algorithm used, England is likely to win the 2010 World Cup edition.

Although the initial World Cup Model Score shows Brazil as the strongest team taking part at the tournament, further correlations with the fixture table give England as the World Cup winners, followed on the 2nd place by Spain and on the 3rd place by Netherlands.

Source: J.P. Morgan 2010 – A quantitative report to winning the World Cup 2010

The forecasting algorithm used is based, according with the JP Morgan experts, on a successful Quant Model developed by J.P. Morgan over the years, which combines in its current adapted methodology: market prices, FIFA rankings, historical results and the J.P. Morgan team strength indicators. All these metrics, but also many others that were not mentioned above, are grouped in what is called the J.P. Morgan Cazenove Quant World Cup-Picking Model presented below.

Source: J.P. Morgan 2010 – A quantitative report to winning the World Cup 2010

Three of the most interesting and flavored metrics used in this model are:

• Consistency in Market Sentiment: Average (Probability of Winning) / (Max (Probability of Winning) – Min (Probability of Winning))

In terms of this metric, Brazil, England and Ivory Coast provide less risk in terms of the results surprise.

• J.P. Morgan Cazenove Success Ratio Indicator: it is calculated by computing the Win Ratio (Proportion of wins from the total number of games played) and scaling it by FIFA World Ranking

In terms of this metric, Netherlands, Spain, Chile and Brazil should be preferred, when picking a winner for the World Cup 2010.

As the model in its current structure takes in consideration only fixture results from the normal playing time interval, a new metric was decided to be introduced in order to cover the probability of a drawn match in the knockout phases.

• Penalty shootout metric: combines ability to score with goalkeeper ability using the formula shown below.

In terms of this metric, England, Spain, Netherlands and Germany are the favorites to win the World Cup.

Other noticeable facts that are outlined by the report are the World ranking vs probability of winning correlations which show that there are a few disagreements between FIFA World Ranking and the low probability of winning, in the cases of Portugal, Netherlands, Greece or high probability of winning, in the cases of England, Argentina and Ivory Coast.

Source: J.P. Morgan 2010 – A quantitative report to winning the World Cup 2010

Additionally to these findings, a final aspect that the J.P. Morgan report indicates is that the 3 favorite teams, as outlined by the World Cup Model Score:  Brazil, Spain and England represent a 52, 5% probability of winning the World Cup.

However, despite all these predictions, football fans should still keep up in mind at all times that the “ball is round” and that football is by its nature an unpredictable game.  No later than last night, Spain, the European Reigning Champions were defeated with 1-0 by their Swiss opponents, which started as outsiders, in a game from the first round of the group stage at the South Africa World Cup 2010.

References:

Tags: , , , , , ,
Posted in Events, Performance Measurement, smartKPIs.com | No Comments »

Investment bankers views on the 2010 World Cup South Africa – The World Cup and Economics 2010

Tuesday, June 15th, 2010

The 2010 report on the The World Cup and Economics was recently released by the Global Investment Research Division of Goldman Sachs. Besides forecasting football scores and rankings, the report presents an analysis regarding the correlation with other types of indicators within the World Cup context, such as:

  • Gross National Product (GNP) per Capita – measures the dollar value of the outputs (goods and services) produced within a country, divided by the number of its citizens (smartkpis.com, 2010)
  • Growth Environment Scores (GES) – represents a composite measure of growth conditions for 170 countries, aimed at summarizing the overall growth environment. Goldman Sachs introduces the GES in 2005, to rank countries according to their ability to achieve their growth potential. (Goldman Sachs, 2006)

After testing statistically both GNP per capita and GES with the current FIFA rankings, the conclusions were:

  • The correlation between GNP per capita and the current FIFA rankings is –0.17, lower than the correlation in 2006 (–0.41), this being an indication of a weak relationship between GNP per capita and a country’s FIFA ranking.

FIFA World Cup Rankings vs GNP per Capita (Goldman Sachs 2010)

  • Overall, the correlation between GES and FIFA rankings is also weak, only –0.07. For developed countries, the correlation is 0.29, while for developing countries it is –0.004. A reason for this low correlation level is Brazil and Argentina, for which, their GES cannot explain their high ranking.

GES and FIFA Ranking correlation score (Goldman Sachs, 2010)

Improvement in GES and FIFA Ranking (Goldman Sachs, 2010)

  • For the smaller emerging markets, the improvement in GES could conceivably be associated with better infrastructure and funding facilities for football. For example, Algeria has improved the most among developing countries, in both its GES and FIFA ranking. (Goldman Sachs 2010)

At its fourth edition, World Cup and Economics 2010 report presents also football statistics and odds for each country, offering even an intriguing exercise that calculates probabilities for the likely winner of the Cup.

References:

Goldman Sachs 2010, The World Cup and Economics 2010, available at: http://www2.goldmansachs.com/ideas/global-economic-outlook/the-world-cup-2010-doc.pdf (accessed 7 June 2010)

Goldman Sachs 2006, You Reap What You Sow: Our 2006 Growth Environment Scores, available at: http://www2.goldmansachs.com/ideas/brics/book/BRICs-Chapter6.pdf (accessed 7 June 2010)

smartkpis.com (2010), Gross national product per capita, available at http://www.smartkpis.com/kpi-key-performance-indicator/gross-national-product-per-capita-2902.html (accessed 14 June 2010).

Tags: , , , , , ,
Posted in Events, KPI, smartKPIs.com | No Comments »

South Africa 2010 FIFA World Cup social media fever – the most viewed ads on YouTube

Monday, June 14th, 2010

Without any doubt, social media is one of the hottest topics in marketing practice today. Both large and small businesses use it to leverage their marketing efforts. Benefits are obvious and they rely mainly on the “viral” characteristic that social media platforms enhance.

The latest example of a company who brilliantly explored the advantages of the social media marketing by associating one of its marketing campaigns with the second biggest sport competition in the world after Olympic Games, the World Cup South Africa 2010, is Nike.

Even though is not an official partner of the World Cup event, Nike turned the buzz created round the world soccer competition into its favor, by mastering a brilliant social marketing campaign.

As the latest Nielsen Company study reveals, Nike was mentioned in 30.2% of the English messages online, outrunning by far important World Cup South Africa 2010 partners such as Adidas, Coca-Cola, Sony or Visa (Nielsen Wire, 2010).

The study was conducted between May 7th to June 6th 2010 and looked at all World Cup related messages on blogs, message boards, groups, videos and image sites including You Tube, Facebook or Twitter – that mentioned at least one of the 10 official FIFA partners and sponsors with a global footprint or two of their top competitors (Nielsen Wire, 2010).

Source: Nielsen Wire, 2010

Additionally, if it is to make a top of the most viewed TV commercial ads and songs relating with the  World Cup South Africa 2010 event, as outlined by the metric # Views on YouTube, we find Nike as the clear leader, again:

1. Nike: # Views = 14,829,784 (accessed 13 June 2010)

2. Shakira & FIFA World Cup South Africa 2010 – Official Song: # Views = 6,595,756 (accessed 13 June 2010)

3. Adidas: # Views = 2,961,940 (accessed 13 June 2010)

4. Pepsi: # Views = 788,766 (accessed 13 June 2010)

5. Optus: # Views = 134,987 (accessed 13 June 2010)

References:

Additional resources:

Tags: , ,
Posted in KPI, Measure, Performance Measurement | No Comments »

Featured products

[no image]
$183 USD
 
[no image]
$99 USD
 
[no image]
$35 USD
 
[no image]
$99 USD
 
[no image]
$1800 USD
 
[no image]
$99 USD
 
[no image]
$289 USD
 
[no image]
$45 USD