New Study: Measuring Suspense and Surprise in European Football
Dominant clubs make matches less suspenseful, but not necessarily less surprising
A new study by Raphael Flepp, together with Tim Pawlowski and Travis Richardson (University of Tübingen), published in the European Journal of Operational Research, proposes a new way to measure what makes a football match attractive to watch.
The authors distinguish two dimensions: suspense, a forward-looking measure of how uncertain the outcome still is in the next minute, and surprise, a backward-looking measure of how much an event (a goal, for instance) shifted expectations. Both are calculated at the minute-by-minute level and aggregated over the entire match.
Based on millions of simulated matches, the authors derive a theoretical benchmark range for evenly balanced games, then compare it against over 25,000 real matches from Europe's top five leagues (2010/11 to 2023/24). One key finding: suspense in matches involving dominant teams regularly falls below the benchmark, while surprise mostly stays within the expected range. Trends over time also differ sharply across leagues, so the data don't support a blanket claim that European football has become less attractive.
Curious how suspense and surprise play out for specific clubs and leagues, and why a title race can look competitively balanced on paper but still feel predictable? The paper breaks it down in detail, including club-by-club patterns across all five leagues.
Read the full paper: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ejor.2026.07.017