Win, lose, or draw: trends in English football match results
33 comments
·July 11, 2025PaulHoule
I find those charts hard to read because there is so much going on. If they were made less cluttered I think I could take away a more clear message.
darkwater
Looking from the perspective of other top tier European countries leagues (Spain & Italy), the English Premiere League is always seen as an example of more equal money distribution (beside having more absolute money in general, I think a newly promoted team there earns more from thei own league than the 5th club in Italy IIRC), so this article kind of surprised me. Is this a "point of view" issue or do we get factually wrong information outside England?
zerkten
I think what you are observing is for it to be more valuable to own any part of the Premier League. The top clubs were spoken for long ago in terms of ownership, so anyone looking for a piece of the pie needs to pick clubs lower down. When picking a club, you want one that has stability.
Eventually you get people having to invest in riskier clubs, like Leeds United, who don't quite have traction as they float in and out of the Premier League. This is still viewed as more valuable than other European leagues.
There are factors like ownership rules, limits on tickets prices, and politics in other leagues which make it less attractive for external entities to buy in. Therefore, there is less value in owning a smaller piece of it.
As with the Super League you'll get a lot of resistance from the clubs and authorities when there is a threat to some of the big clubs. They know that when things start changing, investment will come to some of the smaller and less successful clubs which will change the dynamics. Everyone knows that it'll change many elements of the game and people are rightly protective when they can be.
mfro
While the premise of 'draws are boring' is debatable, I do think the discussion on unequal finances in prem clubs needs to continue. For some years parachute payments have helped with the relegation issues, but there seems to be a recurring issue of the top 4 clubs ignoring their spending limits and overall compounding their power transferring top players.
Also, nice article. I enjoyed the interactive graphs.
BurningFrog
0-0 draws can be very boring. Aside from that I don't mind draws at all.
You guessed it: I didn't grow up in the US :)
close04
> the premise of 'draws are boring' is debatable
I also found this a bit off. Lots of goals ending in a draw can also be great fun. Wins are great for the fans of the winning team. But if you're a fan of the sport, then an engaging match, ideally with lots of goals is more fun even if it's a draw.
I've seen plenty of absolutely thrilling goalless draws, and plenty of boring 1 goal wins.
zerkten
I feel exactly the same way. Scoring, or high scoring draws along with metrics like attempted shots would be an interesting element to look at. A team like Manchester United where there is data for long periods of droughts and success show how some of these metrics go through the floor in what fans would identify as bad times (there are so many poor-quality draws since Ferguson left.)
I found it particularly interesting that someone from the UK (as the author appears to be) suggested that draws might be boring. In my personal experience, that tends to be a North American phenomenon (not that others don't or can't express that feeling).
On a related note, Cricket draws can be epic. There are many examples like https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2009/dec/06/michael-athert....
clueless
the result of the last World cup (2022) finale being the absolute best example of such engaging match...
dylan604
As a fan, there are times when competing for the top spot you wish draws on rivals. Then there are times when you hope both teams in a match lose.
tharmas
Precisely. Evenly matched teams can make for an exciting game. Sure, if they play extremely conservatively it could be a bore.
But is one team thrashing another 5 - Nil (even in the first half) an "exciting game? Id argue not, for both sets of fans.
But in the money league (aka EPL) this is a big problem for many of the games.
Also, its the same small set of teams vying for the title EVERY year after year after year. Its almost as bad as the Bundesliga. Seriously, is Bayern Munchin going to win the Bundesliga this year? Or is it Rael Madrid or Barcelona that are going to win the Spanish League? Celtic or Rangers? BORING!
Say what you will about the American NFL, but at least they have more variety in who wins the Super Bowl. But they do have to sort out the lopsided score always in the final.
h46u5jytyhtg
I completely disagree with the premise of the article that draws are most boring and the wider the score difference the more interesting the game is.
Frequently draws are very exciting, they can make compelling viewing. In a game that is completely dominated by one team, there can be very little of interest.
An alternative metric would be the degree of uncertainty/jeopardy in the game. So a game that ends 1-1 has a high degree of jeopardy because at any moment a team can score and take point from the other team.
WesleyLivesay
Agreed, classifying all draws as boring is just wrong.
There are boring draws, some are excruciating to watch because so little is happening.
There are also draws that are the most stressful, exciting, and action packed games you will ever see.
empath75
What makes draws interesting or not depends on two things, what is happening on the field (were there good chances? A lot of goals? Interesting strategic play?), and also the context of the game. Does the outcome matter for your team, or not?
Some of the best games I've ever watched ended in draws, but that point mattered for whether my team was going to take over first place or not, or whether they made it out of the group stage or not.
The really boring draws are when one team is basically just playing very defensively and also the game doesn't matter to either team.
kmnc
Yeah but if you’re actually hoping for one of those teams to win, and not just watching for the “quality” of a match a draw is, always boring.
dylan604
Someone else mentioned needing additional stats to just the score line. There are most definitely boring draws. There are also boring blow outs. If the draw comes with lots of saves, which naturally means lots of shots on target, lots of corners, equal time of possession, then that would be a much more exciting match. A game with a low shot count and few corners would indicate a potentially boring game
0xcafecafe
Most of the time unless your club is playing, you'd root for a draw in games between top teams for the rivals to drop points. So rooting for a draw is more exciting for a Liverpool fan watching an Arsenal City game for instance.
FranklinMaillot
The number of goals scored in a game would be a better metric in my opinion.
thom
The sum of positive possession-value deltas! Captures end-to-end games where exciting dribbles nevertheless don't convert into shots or goals.
dylan604
Like those thrilling 3-0 American Throwball scores that are labeled classic defensive battles? In proper Football, that’s just called parking the bus
tharmas
Agreed as well. I would say shots on target (not straight at the goalkeeper) are a good metric of an exciting game. I would also include near misses past the post and just over the bar as I don't think these are officially counted as "shots on target".
Dribbles or passing plays into the box which may not result in a shot are exciting too. For match excitement/entertainment value these should be measured also.
OneFriend2575
The sharp drop in Premier League draws after 1993 clearly lines up with increasing club inequality, something most fans feel but isn't always backed by data.
It raises an important question: is competitive balance worse for business? Fans love unpredictability, but money seems to be concentrating power.
mrkramer
Few months ago I was watching Bernie Ecclestone and Max Mosley interviews and they said that in F1 there should be a cap on how much teams are allowed to spend because Mercedes always wins....but in football there are no such thoughts and limits and that's why Manchester City and PSG rose so hard in the last 10 years. If you pump billions of dollars into any business, you will more likely win than not win, just look at TikTok, they pumped billions into advertising and user-acqisition and now they rule on mobile.
dylan604
There absolutely are limits on how much can be spent. That’s why Man City is under investigation of 100+ charges for violating FFP, financial fair play, rules.
Even the Yankees were deemed unbeatable because the power of their checkbook, yet they haven’t won the World Series since 2009 (according to quick search. I don’t follow baseball). So the big purse isn’t always the thing people make it to be. Sure it helps, but no guarantees. Otherwise, moneyball wouldn’t have been a thing
mrkramer
>There absolutely are limits on how much can be spent. That’s why Man City is under investigation of 100+ charges for violating FFP, financial fair play, rules.
They are under investigation posteriori, they should've been stopped apriori acquiring top players for large sums of money.
tharmas
Unfortunately, because of the phenomenon of "brand loyalty" fans will continue to support their teams even when they have no chance of winning anything (due to lack of finances); and the elites that run the EPL know this all too well.
Much more fun to go out and support lower league clubs. And cheaper too.
null
bretpiatt
English football, unlike tic-tac-toe, can be thrilling and end in a draw. Possession mix, shots on goal, and more stats are useful to determine how exciting a match was from a box score.
Frankly, for me the most boring is a 2-0 win where the team scores those 2 in the first 20 to 30 minutes, swaps to a 5-4-1, and plays tiki-taka passing possession control without trying hard to advance the ball for the remaining hour of the match.
red_trumpet
Tic-tac-toe certainly can end in a draw though...
empath75
MLS works really hard to keep a "level playing field" in terms of spending, and really leans into "parity", and also has a knockout tournament to figure out the "champion", so whoever wins the championship season to season is basically a crap shoot.
Miami set the record for most points earned in a season for the regular season and then went out in the first round to an 8th seeded team. LA Galaxy won the title last season and are currently sitting at the bottom of the table halfway through the season.
Anybody can win any game, but most of the teams are thoroughly mediocre, and MLS struggles even to beat Mexican teams, let alone do well at something like the Club World Cup (Miami being an exception because they spent the money to sign the best person in the history of soccer to the team, and even then they suffered from the lack of depth caused by the salary cap).
IMO, parity and mediocrity is also boring, and I would much prefer a league that allowed teams to spend more if they want and really try to compete on an international level. Even if that means you have 2 or 3 teams that dominate the league, that is not necessarily bad. Baseball was dominated by the Yankees for literally decades, and it survived and even thrived.
DizzyDoo
Hmm, I'm not convinced that one team dominating a league leads to exciting outcomes. What do you think about Bundesliga's situation?[0]
[0] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bundesliga#List_of_champions
HenryBemis
> If your team always wins, why do you care?
Betting/gambling. Also talking shit to your friends in the pub which support the 'other' team (in a (friendly) banter).
I remember when I was betting (a lot) with Ladbrokes 15-20 years ago, I _loved_ statistics. But win/lose/draw was never my cup of tea. I would study the numbers and find teams who score/receive a lot and would bet on Over/Under. It didn't even have to be the 'premier' leagues. There were teams in Finland and Netherlands that would have an aggregate of 6-8 goals in most games. This was as certain as it could be. Low yield but steady yield. It just took time. I assume now with LLMs, one could write a prompt that would get an LLM to scour the interweb and give it "the games with over/under of x1.5 or more and teams that do so-and-so.. but.. who has time for that!
I think this measures the wrong thing.
0-0 games are boring, but not because they're draws. It's because there are no goals!
I think most fans agree with me that a 2-2 draw is more entertaining than a 1-0 win.