17 year old Luke Littler has single handedly changed darts. His 2023 World Championship final was the highest viewed non-football programme in the history of Sky Sports. For the Premier League Darts, which Littler joined via a guest invitation, there were 125,000 ticket sales on the first day; usually, they sell 60,000 in the first week.
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The club’s coaching staff noticed that Pablo Zabaleta, their dogged and industrious defender, had a habit of sprinting across the field during lulls in play. He had worked out that doing so helped him improve two key physical metrics: total distance covered and the number of high-intensity sprints he had produced.
Sir Alex Ferguson noticed that defender Jaap Stam was making fewer tackles than in previous seasons. The data convinced the manager that Stam was past his prime, leading Ferguson to transfer him to Italian club Lazio. But in reality Stam was making fewer tackles because he was making more interceptions and keeping the ball more as a result: his performance was improving, not declining. Ferguson later conceded, “without a question, I made a mistake there. Jaap Stam was the one.”
The Mo Salah effect: after Salah joined Liverpool F.C. hate crimes in the Liverpool area dropped by 16%, and Liverpool F.C. fans halved their rates of posting anti-Muslim tweets relative to fans of other top-flight clubs.
Want to become an NBA player? It helps if your dad played in the league. And you can massively increase your odds of becoming President by the same token (though beware low sample sizes for that stat).
Aside from China (a country with 1.4 billion people and rising wealth), the countries with the most Olympic medals are all high-income democracies. Why is this? They are good at taking care of their inhabitants. Even in the remotest outposts of Norway, for instance, there’s generally an all-weather sports ground around the corner. Usually the changing rooms are warm, the coaches have diplomas, and kids can train and play at a reasonable price.
In the 2022/23 season, Arsenal led the table for 247 days (93% of total) but eventually lost out to Man City – who only led for 28 days (7%).
The tennis superstar won 80% of the singles matches he played, but only 54% of the individual points. Not all points are made equal.
Superstitions are no joke. Basketball players are 12% more accurate with free throws following pre-performance rituals.
When a journalist watched the world’s best at Wimbledon, he noticed the differences in their warm ups. Nadal was aggressive, sprinting up and down like a man possessed. Djokovic was calm, measured and scientific with every shot. And when Federer warmed up, he was giggling, doing trick shots and exploring his own creativity. There is no right way of doing it – each style worked for the individual.
VAR has only helped to magnify the subjectivity in Premier League refereeing; it just means those decisions now take several minutes, and they happen in an office not on the pitch.
When the Welsh rugby team played France they had just signed a new shirt sponsor: the ale Brains. Unfortunately, French law meant you couldn’t advertise booze on the shirts – so they changed the logo from Brains to Brawn, all in the same recognisable font.
In 2024, Wimbledon tennis introduced the ‘overheard at Wimbledon’ YouTube series – video clips featuring fans while mic’d up at the event. Given tennis is struggling to attract audiences, especially after the retirement of Federer & Nadal, it’s a simple yet way of making the sport more fun and accessible. The series received over 12 million views in 2 weeks.