Robert Mastrodomenico is a fellow of the Royal Statistical Society as well as owner and founder of his statistical consulting company Global Sports Statistics.. He is also the Chair of RSS’ Statisticians for Society initiative since its inception in 2017. He is also an RSS Statistical Ambassador, which involves regular work with the media in assisting with their reporting of statistical issues.
Episode Description
The COVID pandemic put many Sports on hold during 2020, but with the industry roaring back with the 2021 Summer Olympics as well as World Cup qualifier matches sports, and sports statistics, are back. Which is the perfect timing for the unveiling of the Royal Statistical Society's 2021 Sports Statistic of the Year.
+Full Transcript
Pennington
The COVID pandemic put many sports on hold during 2020 with the industry roaring back in 2021, with the Tokyo Summer Olympics, as well as World Cup qualifier matches. With the return of sports came the return of sports statistics. The Royal Statistical Society's 2021 Sports statistic of the year is the focus of this episode of stats and the stories where we explore the statistics behind the stories and the stories behind the statistics. I'm Rosemary Pennington. stats and stories is a production of Miami University's Department of Statistics and media, journalism and film, as well as the American Statistical Association. Joining me is regular panelist John Bailer, Chair of Miami statistics department. Our guest today is Robert Mastrodomenico of the Royal Statistical Society and owner and founder of statistical consulting company, global sports statistics. Mastrodomenico has chaired the RSS as statisticians for society initiative since inception in 2017, and serves as our SS statistical ambassador, which involves assisting and media in their reporting of statistical issues. Mastrodomenico is also the vice chair of RSS statistics in the sports section, which chose this year's winners in the sports statistic of the year competition. Robert, thank you so much for joining us, again,
Mastrodomenico
Thank you for having me. It's great to be here.
Pennington
When you are evaluating stats to be lauded as the statistic of the year, what sort of things are you looking for, particularly as this as a sport stats in relation to sports, like what what kinds of things stand out?
Mastrodomenico
We were kind of, as a committee, that the kind of remit was to look for something that would appeal to the public. The RSS runner, statistics of the year, initiative, very similar. And this kind of was born out of that, we wanted to kind of come up with something that would engage the public, and, you know, it's something that was accessible. And I think that was a key, but probably one of the big things that came out of doing this was to get something that was positive, because, you know, it hasn't always been that positive over the last year. And when we kind of came together as a committee, when we brought together all the statistics, it was surprising how many kinds of positive statistics we could find. And, you know, we wanted to kind of come up with something that people could kind of say, that's great, you know, you know, as things get back to normal, this is a real positive kind of statistic, a message that we can kind of
Bailer
I was wondering if perhaps he just wanted to be on stats and stories again. I mean, it would be fully understandable. If that were indeed the case. I'm curious. Did you get a lot of submissions, a lot of nominations for possible stats of the year, in sports, you say?
Mastrodomenico
The RSS has statistics in the sports section. So it's a number of people who volunteer their time, they will most of us have worked within or, and all have an interest in statistics and sports or background in statistics. So a lot of this was looking for kind of stories published in the media, things that we could kind of, you know, say this is a stat, you know, something that's fairly simple, we didn't want to, you know, come up with some really convoluted machine learning method to submission like that, to say, this is great sports that of the year, even though you know, it could be some really good work, it had to be punchy, easily explainable. And so a lot of that was done by the committee, we had nominations from outside the committee, it was open to people within the RSS who saw, you know, the messages that we put out, but, you know, most of it was done within the committee in their own time looking for kind of media stories, statistics, things that had been put out there. So, and a lot of this, you know, we were kind of looking at kind of bigger stories, things that, you know, would engage the audience as opposed to really niche things that, you know, maybe wouldn't get much traction with people outside the RSS, but also engage those within the RSS and, you know, the normal statistical community to aren't necessarily ofay with, you know, the minutiae of a lot of sports.
Pennington
So what was the stat of the year?
Mastrodomenico
Wow, the winning statistic was 53%. And that is the percentage of Team GB athletes at Tokyo 2020, who were female, and it's the first time in its 125 year history that the team has had more female than male athletes at the Summer Olympic Games. And the source of that was Team GB, and we thought that was, you know, a really kind of positive stat. And, and in many ways, surprising, but unsurprising, but it's just nice to kind of see that this hasn't happened. And I think from the committee as well, a lot of us were surprised it hadn't happened before. But I think it's a really nice story. And this kind of coincided with, you know, a lot of great female results at the Olympics we had loads of, I'm not sure why, obviously, I followed the Olympics. But you know, the UK is very UK centric on our kind of media. And there were a lot of great stories of athletes that hadn't had success previously, which was really nice in some of the new sports that we'd never seen before. And you know, a lot of these are female athletes, which I thought was really great. And, you know, the whole story, I think, and the statistics kind of encapsulated what was a really great time in sports and the UK as a whole.
Pennington
Is that a story that the news media in Great Britain picked up on and reported on?
Mastrodomenico
We put it out there within the media, but I think more so what kind of happens during the Olympics, and I'm not sure if it's the same in the US is the focus a lot on the athlete and the, you know, the sport and everything, because everything's so fast moving, you know, you've got lots and lots of kind of everydays and new stars made and we had a lot of those kind of new stars come out of nowhere, you know, our rowing didn't perform as well as it had done. And you know, there were other sports that compensated for that and did much better. And, you know, the media because everything is so dynamic, it's kind of like, you know, a football tournament, or, you know, a big event where you've got lots and lots of kinds of people from around the world coming together. The news is moving so fast. So I think the focus was less on the gender more on the kind of the people but that kind of this, I think, if people look back and kind of think of this statistic in the context of the Olympics, it kind of, you know, magnifies what was a real positive games for the UK. And I think for the world in general, I think there's a lot of countries that you can look at what happened in Tokyo, against all the kind of adversity and kind of say, that was really positive and bofur Olympics and Paralympics, as well, just even put on a games is, you know, mind blowing, and some of the other statistics that were nominated kind of show a lot of the kind of adversity that came up against, you know, them putting on this, you know, this massive showcase.
Bailer
All right, yeah, it was, it was pretty remarkable to me to think about athletes that were planning and prepping to compete in one year, and have to push that down the road for another year to do that. That was remarkable. And, and that seemed to be connected to one of the other statistics, sports statistics of the year that you cited, do you want to talk about that? That particular cost statistic that was?
Mastrodomenico
Oh, yeah, yeah, I mean, when we were coming up with, you know, the 640 billion, which, in massive numbers, the estimated cost in Japanese yen, of delaying the Tokyo Olympics from 2020, to 2021. And that was from the Japan Times, and we kind of chose this just to kind of, and we had a few other nominations around the effect of COVID on sports and the cost to it, but just the magnitude of just moving an event like this back one year, is just colossal, and, you know, to put on the games like this, you know, they should be commended. I mean, the Olympics as a whole cost a lot of money. And I think, you know, there's loads of things against them. No fans, no traveling, you know, we've had to Olympics fairly soon, you know, we had the one in London, and the effect on you know, the whole country with people coming in, and the people within the country is massive, you feel it, but to do it in Tokyo under those conditions is, you know, crazy. You know, I think you guys have gone to the Olympics coming up at some point, you know, which I'm sure. And I think, you know, it'll be a great year where people can travel and come but to put this on in, you know, with no funds. And I think, you know, I think they did a great job. I watch all the Olympics all the time, and I really enjoyed it. And, you know, I'm a sports geek. And, you know, I love the fans there. But I think, you know, the moment sometimes without the fans, you know, it didn't take away from it in a lot of instances are loads of great stories. And some events did have, you know, just the people, the sports people around it kind of made those events that the BMX and you know, things like that new sports, so we can't see, I think, yeah, I thought it was really good. And, you know, but the cost and you know, that number is astronomical. And, you know, there was probably a rationale just to not do it. But I think, you know, from, you know, this kind of moving on, and what we've got out of it, I think it was a real positive sign that they did do it up against all those odds.
Pennington
I think it was interesting, and we'll talk about a couple of the other stats that are on here, but the fact that what you chose as the winner, and then the highly commended, none of them are really related and connected to COVID. But none of them are really overtly COVID stories. And I wonder if that is something that in your group, you sort of discussed about, like how to handle that because I would imagine it's a hard thing to avoid even in the introduction to this podcast I referenced COVID because it is sort of that reality. I wonder if you guys were talking about like how to handle stories around COVID and what you wanted to do when it came to them.
Mastrodomenico
I think a lot of this, kind of, happened organically because a lot of this was done, you know independently people within the committee and even this new submissions coming in. We were just looking for interesting stuff. And then we'll look, there were a lot of COVID ones that came in. But the process of kind of elimination of getting goes down to the kind of most interesting and the ones that we thought would, you know, tell the best stories, it kind of happened naturally because especially over the period, we did it, there are a lot of kinds of stories around, you know, if we think of soccer, for example, the effect of No, no fans what that had on the home advantage, you know, how many away when things like that the time seemed, you know, huge and really important, but as we kind of gathered more and more, and, you know, more events start to somewhat get back to normal, we had the euros here, which is another statistic that we mentioned, you know, things felt like we were kind of getting through COVID, you know, that they will ever get braved, probably always going to be here. But, you know, the normality around it and the positiveness that kind of comes out of, especially here in the UK, of the lockdowns we had and you know, not being able to go out and it these, these just kind of it was way more organic. And I think even the committee thought, because at the start, personally, and I think a few others in the committee thought this was just going to be a super COVID base statistic, and everything we'd have would be COVID, COVID, COVID. But these ones kind of came out of it, which I think he's great at. And I think those organic processes just kind of gather what's out there. And then, you know, between us, we had a part we had a kind of review panel who would go through what the best ones were and what we thought would be the best ones. It felt good to kind of come up with this. I think that there wasn't a lot of time on the panels. There's, you know, a unanimous kind of, there's not always a unanimous winner, this kind of was really easy to do. Really? Yeah.
Bailer
So it is a quick follow up. Did you have a specific rubric? Or a set of criteria that you were using to evaluate these stories? I mean, how did you? How did you process these nominated pieces?
Mastrodomenico
A lot of it was kind of based on we just went through them, it would seem really kind of like we had a meeting of all our kind of judging panel, and one by one, we just go through it. Ones people liked, ones people didn't, you know, process of voting.
Bailer
Survivor sports. You voted off the island. So I've got to say, we have a convoluted method over 20 weeks.
Mastrodomenico
Exactly, yeah, you vote on phone, tweeting who you like, but it was much easier than we thought we kind of planned out. I think after a few meetings, we thought we would need a while to do this. And actually this happened quite quickly. And it was really easy to do. And I think, you know, again, the kind of positiveness of some of the stories and, you know, the 53% was, I think, quite interesting, you know, it surprised a few people, you know, on the panel, and it was a simple statistic that, you know, was positive and was timely. And, you know, in the end, we didn't have any kind of opposition to the winner.
Pennington
You're listening to Stats and Stories and today we're talking to Robert Mastrodomenico about the RSS is sports statistic of the year. I am going to ask a question about the one stat that seems overtly COVID related that is on here about this 66% number in connection to the Euro 2020. Do you want to talk us through that as one of its one of the highly commended stats?
Mastrodomenico
Yeah, so we have kind of two around euro 2020 and obviously, there's the 82% which is the estimated average of the UK viewing population you watch England to defeat against Italy in the final and this 66% according to a survey the percentage of the British public who felt attendees at Euro 2020 fixtures in the UK should have mandatory proof of vaccination. And this was we kind of thought this was quite a nice one because it encapsulated how people thought about vaccinations COVID as a whole are kind of protocols around you know, people going back to sports because for us especially the euros was the first kind of those those big events you know, the final the semi finals and I was at one of the semifinals was the first kind of time we had masses of people in a stadium and it was it I mean I had a great time but it was very strange to be in a stadium with I think I was it was like 60,000 and in the finals we've got went up higher, but you know, that this all kind of we went from nothing to something really big really quickly and we thought this kind of encapsulated how people thought about that and also how we should move on because the plans for a lot of sporting events after this was to have people back in the stadiums. And if you follow any of the things like the Premier League, you'll see that's the case now. And so we just kind of thought this was quite timely and it kind of captured what was a big kind of point of opinion in the UK.
Bailer
You know, when I was watching some of the the euros the the the How the stadiums were filled in different countries was so different yeah I was thinking the the if you just looked at the range of the percentage of attendance that was permitted it differed by country you know you know that was in a very dramatic way and then you know to see this as kind of this attitude within kind of the UK population towards towards the attendance at the last events I thought that was interesting so I would have I would have been really curious now that you've said this you know, what, what was the distribution of attendance on on these different venues throughout the that tournament?
Mastrodomenico
Yeah, I mean it was so this is probably I'm my kind of main job is you know, my main research focus is football so this was a big thing for me from a kind of research and professional point of view because clients and that the all in this kind of thing and you know, we've got a talk we had a tournament unlike any other where everybody's playing in different countries at a time when you probably shouldn't play in lots of countries and be moving around the whole setup seemed crazy and you know, you know, there could have moved it to one country kept all the teams isolate, but now everybody moves around, but again, they managed it pretty well. And you know, there wasn't too many people thought the whole tournament would fall apart on like, a positive COVID case and we there was a case obviously in England where few players mix in England Scotland game and that caused a slight problem, but as to how the tournament went very well, but you're obviously every country had their own attitudes towards you know, how many people could be in attendance which is based on maybe where the country was in their state of the pandemic and you then kind of link that back to lots of teams having home advantage or through England being one of them Italy being another you know, who played all their group games at home, England essentially had the closest thing they've had to a home tournament since euro 96. And so you know, they had one away game in Italy and everything else was played at home so you know, for me, it wasn't a surprise that we got you know, these two teams in the final and you know, I thought England that was one of their better chances to win something and you know, that came really close and you know, did really well,
Pennington
I'm a fan of the German national soccer team. Yeah. But I man, I was really rooting for England. And that was when I was watching that game and a German restaurant here in Oxford, and it was heartbreaking.
Mastrodomenico
My surname is Italian. So you know, my friends.
Bailer
You know, the one thing I really liked when you talked about the, the percentage of the UK viewing population who watched the, this game, this final, I loved how you communicated this in contrast to other kinds of events? Yeah, so you put that percentage up against a couple of other reference events? So would you like to just sort of just share with the people listening? What were those other references?
Mastrodomenico
Yes, so you know, we had for the final. It had a peak audience of 31 million, and that's not including streaming services or public spaces, it was, you know, a massive audience. And at the time, you know, that was the most watched broadcast since the funeral of Princess Diana in 1997, which, you know, pretty huge event. But we compare that to say the 28 million for Boris Johnson's first lockdown address in March, which at the time to me felt like it was a no brainer that would be, you know, one of the biggest viewed things ever because you've got a complete captive audience. But this kind of changed it and I think the kind of wave of emotion through the country from not just football fans, but everybody kind of got onto the team you know, they're engaged in the team and I think you know, that England team is a quite a positive team to follow and you know, that a lot of the kind of players involved and you know, it's different to kind of previous iterations of the England team you know, it kind of engaged a lot of people because the way they are with the media and media with them and the way they were on the pitch you know, it grew you know, that expectation that we you know, historically in the UK there's always been a big thing about you know, you're a nice six do the tournament and never was that they came so close, and everyone kind of felt this could be the one and it was a step further and people forget, this is you know, a great performance to get to a final in a tournament like this, you know, in any time and this is a really young team and so it kind of really engaged the audience and I also think you know, the period of which it was coming out of lockdown things going back to normal people, just people being able to go to a bar or you know, someone's house you know, which things people now probably even myself I forget, you know, not that long ago I couldn't go to anybody's house but people have in you know, the weather was good times were good. It really engaged the audience and you know, that was felt to us like a really positive statistic, the number of people and it's so high given not everyone likes football football generally isn't watched by that many people in the UK you know, the Premier League is you know, popular, but the viewing figures are nowhere near that but it just kind of took on a life. So in Peru for the tournament, which is great, and I think the tournament did a lot for kind of people, you know, this whole getting back to normal, but it kind of showed, you know, there is a kind of another side we can't get through COVID and, you know, life can be maybe better than it was before. And, you know, this is a great summer.
Bailer
So, you know, as you've gone through this process, as you think about the future, about the kind of this, what stories are coming to your mind also that kind of have emerged out of COVID? Mainly because you said that when you were watching the euros, you were looking at kind of the difference, you know, state how filled stadia were and what that might mean for performance of home teams versus, you know, in other competitions? Are there particular questions, sort of sport related performance questions that really have leaped up and emerge for you, as you think about us coming out of COVID?
Mastrodomenico
Kind of, think, if we take football as an example, it's kind of what is the new normal? I know, that's a real cliched answer. But, you know, when do we go back to what does what does it look like now has COVID changed the way the game is played, you know, you could take some of the American sports that were played during COVID You know, there's a lack of funds to funds coming back in does it change how the game is, you know, and we don't know. And I think it goes back to kind of the effect of COVID at the time, you know, nobody knew what the effect of sports would be because we've never had an event like this so everything was new and it's how how will things kind of change as we go back to what people would consider pre COVID times but you know, you've always had this and you know, from a kind of sports point of view, we always use the past to predict the future it from a statistical point of view how what does that mean going forward? And how's that going to be and I think it's just really interesting to see we won't see it straight away but we'll be able to look back and say, you know, what was the effect? did things just go back to normal? Or did it have a lasting effect on you know, what we expect in any kind of sporting event and it's I think it's just really interesting to just see how that's going to kind of play out.
Pennington
Yeah, it was interesting. My daughter is in the marching band here at the university and I went to one of our away games at the University of Cincinnati stadium they're ranked number eight in the country. They're a huge school and it's it was a situation where you didn't know if anyone was vaccinated around you and people were in masks and not masks and it was such a weird experience because I was excited and I love American football but I also felt nervous about being in that space and I keep wondering like when when are we going to stop feeling nervous about being in all these physical spaces together?
Mastrodomenico
Yeah, and I think you know, in the UK, I kind of we have not so sure for me like much of the day and things like that where we kind of it's from football point of view, you watch the highlights and it feels eerily strange and I've even gotten the telly next to me we've got the Champions League on right now because we're obviously recording this in the evening in the UK think things don't look any different and it's like it feels like we're kind of getting there but we still have that kind of effect of you know, wearing masks and the COVID protocols and things like that. Yeah, I kind of think I mean I've I've always been a believer that you know, people will kind of deviate back to the norm pretty quickly they you know, we just kind of evolve and get on with it and but it's just nice to see sport and I think in many ways it kind of makes you appreciate you more I don't know you know the story you're going to gain and that kind of thing of not having it and then having it back I remember going to that euro semi final and being like wow, this is like unreal. But yeah, I've been to big games before and big crowds but it just it's been so long and yeah, it's nice I just think sport brings so much and you know that's kind of why I'm into it you know the statistics I've kind of said this yesterday, I don't necessarily love statistics, I really like it and it's good to me, but I love sport and I love kind of bringing those two things together because I can kind of you can make both work and yeah, I just you know, it's just great. I think you know, the kind of the rebirth of sports out of this is such a positive thing.
Bailer
So you describe yourself as a huge football fan and also Olympics what would be your next sport that you would follow as a fan but also explore from sort of statistical concerns and issues.
Mastrodomenico
I mean, I've kind of done from a Cisco point of view pretty much any sport so the American sports always an interesting one, you know, that they're really interesting when you compare them relatively to say, you know, football, things like tennis, a good sport, horse racing, but anything that's got data is of interest, really. So you know, you've got even things like eSports and things that come up that are newer that are you know, a really kind of interesting spaces to explore, because it kind of, you know, I think there's talk of, you know, eSports being, you know, Olympic based or in a period of time because it's just something new and it kind of takes, you know, it's a step beyond kind of what we expect from traditional sports. I'm kind of like anything that's got that kind of competitive element to it, the randomness I think that's what you know. That's the beauty of sport really, you know, it's not always great, but it's always random and you know, you don't get that from everything. And it's I think that's what draws people in, I kind of said, especially like, you know, being if you think of like an American football fan or any kind of sport fan, there's only really one winner and everyone else is disappointed. And you know, that's how sport is it's generally disappointment with very few lights of kind of positivity in it, but we love it because it's the expectation the what if and the randomness that surrounds it, and I kind of you know, that from both kind of fan and statistical point of view makes sport great because not too many things like that way you can bring the two together.
Pennington
As a Cleveland Browns fan, I just fell in my being all of that about the randomness of one winner and lots of disappointment. That is my history as a brown. Thank you so much for joining us again, Rob.
Mastrodomenico
Oh, no worry. It's been great to be on.
Bailer
Yeah, thanks. Thanks to the RSS for putting this on and sponsoring this sports statistics of the year. It kind of makes for a fun conversation. And it's nice to think about what this might mean. And what really draws your eyes so thanks again. No worries. Thank
Pennington
Stats and Stories is a partnership between Miami University’s Departments of Statistics, and Media, Journalism and Film, and the American Statistical Association. You can follow us on Twitter, Apple podcasts, or other places you can find podcasts. If you’d like to share your thoughts on the program send your email to statsandstories@miamioh.edu or check us out at statsandstories.net, and be sure to listen for future editions of Stats and Stories, where we discuss the statistics behind the stories and the stories behind the statistics.