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.
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.
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.
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%).
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.