18.08.2026
Entertainment value of European soccer remains high despite top clubs’ dominance
Study by Universities of Tübingen and Zurich measures entertainment value of five top European leagues and finds matches involving top clubs often being less suspenseful but still deliver surprises.
The appeal of soccer matches to spectators is a key factor in the success of professional sports leagues. League officials therefore seek to make competitions as interesting as possible. But how can the appeal of matches and competitions be measured?
It’s widely believed that the smaller the performance gap between teams and the harder it is to predict the outcome of a match, the more appealing the match is. Researchers from the University of Tübingen and the University of Zurich have now collaborated to investigate whether the entertainment value of soccer matches can indeed be explained by the predictability of results. For this, they analyzed more than 25,000 matches from the Premier League, Bundesliga, La Liga, Serie A, and Ligue 1.
They found that entertainment value can be better assessed by considering two different aspects of the experience rather than a single metric: suspense and surprise contribute to a match’s appeal, but often vary in their impact. The study has been published in the European Journal of Operational Research.
- Paper: Raphael Flepp, Tim Pawlowski, Travis Richardson: Suspense and surprise in European football. European Journal of Operational Research, 2026, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ejor.2026.07.017
- Press release by the University of Tübingen: Link
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