Kevin Wang/Staff reporter
For sports players and sports fans, it’s easy to believe that the successes of each team are determined by the skills of the players alone. But as much as one likes to think matches are determined by all skill, luck also plays a big role in the outcome. But by how much? In his book,The Success Equation, Michael Mauboussin investigates the luck-to-skill ratio in sports and how different leagues compare to each other.
For individual sports, it’s much easier to calculate since there are fewer people involved. That’s why in a game such as tennis, one person can stay on the top for years. The situation becomes harder to calculate when it comes to team sports. Team sports such as soccer and hockey are more random, as more players mean more variants to consider. The number of players, their interactions, their playtime and how many games they play are just a few examples of variants within team sports.
When the sample size shrinks, the number of variants increases. In the case of games played, fewer games mean more luck. A league such as the NFL only plays 16 games per team. The smaller number of trials pushes football closer to the luck side, as it is much harder for skill to show prominence in such few trials.
In the case of players’ skills, a smaller sample size means more variants and a larger skill gap. Games such as basketball requires a rarer body type, making the sample size much smaller. Two players at 7 feet tall could have very different skills but can still be in the NBA by virtue of their height. On the other hand, games such as hockey or baseball don’t need a body-type requirement, leading to more samples and a smaller skill gap between each player. A smaller skill gap means luck becomes a greater factor.
Another component is how players interact with one another and game possession. In baseball, teams must have 9 different batters, meaning the best player can’t be the one batting each time. However, in basketball, the best player can play for most of the game, leading to skill contributing more to the team’s success. Hockey is similar to basketball but is faster and erratic, so even the best players need to take a break.
To calculate the variance of skill, Mauboussin subtracted the real-world outcome of games by a theoretical result if games were won solely on luck. The real-world result would be the difference of win-loss records between each team, and the luck-based outcome is dependent on the number of games each team plays. More games mean the closer to 50/50 the results are, like in a coin toss. He averaged the results of each for 5 sports leagues, basketball (NBA), football (NFL), hockey (NHL), Baseball (MBL), and soccer (EPL). Mauboussin found that luck plays a much smaller role in the NBA (12%) than in the NHL (53%), even though both leagues play 82 games during the regular season. This isn’t to say that hockey requires less skill. In fact, it may mean it requires more to be a part of the league. The data only shows that the outcome of each match is more dependent on luck and less representative of each team’s skills.
Of course, whether or not the sport you invest your time in is more skill or luck, as fans it’s the highs and lows of the journey that keeps us interested and engaged.
Sources:
Why underdogs do better in hockey than basketball
Why it’s so much harder to predict winners in hockey than basketball
Luck and Skill Untangled: The Science of Success
Luck vs Skill: Comparing the role of chance in hockey, football, baseball, soccer and basketball