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Open research questions in Sports Analytics and Performance

65 unresolved questions extracted from the limitations and future-work sections of 3,130 Sports Analytics and Performance papers in our library. Each links back to the study that raised it.

What the literature leaves open

  • (2014) demonstrated that cognitive-motor decline begins around age 24 in StarCraft 2 players, but whether this age-linked decline interacts with relative age within birth cohorts remains unexplored. strengthens confidence specifications include Fourth, the combination of propensity score matching with mediation analysis provides a multi-method triangulation strategy for distinguishing direct from indirect birth quarter effects, an approach that could be productively extended to RAE research in traditional sport, where post-entry career effects remain understudied.

    No relative age effect in professional esports: a cross-national test of selection mechanisms · 2026 · DOI

  • Nevertheless, the fundamental mechanisms governing such play are not well understood: what shapes player interactions on the pitch? What short-term goals guide players' decisions about their movements over the next few seconds? We address these questions by focusing on one-on-one settings in open play, in which the attacker, in possession of the ball and typically dribbling, faces a defender aiming to stop or delay the attacker's actions over a short period.

    A behavioral principle underlying attacker-defender interactions in soccer · 2026

  • For this reason, future studies could consider multivariate techniques, such as MANOVA, which allow correlated performance variables to be examined simultaneously within a single analytical framework. 1854908 LIMITATIONS This study has several methodological limitations that should be taken into account when interpreting the results.

    The Relationship Between Expected Goals (xG) Based Performance Indicators and Match Outcomes in Elite Football: The 2024–2025 English Premier League Season · 2026 · DOI

  • Although this study included all registered players in the Serbian Super and First League, future research could focus on lower divisions or specifically on players with substantial playing time to refine the analysis. Finally, given the confirmed presence of RAE in Serbian professional football, future studies should investigate its occurrence among female football players or youth football players in Serbia.

    THE RELATIVE AGE EFFECT AMONG PROFESSIONAL FOOTBALL PLAYERS IN SERBIA · 2026 · DOI

  • In conclusion, TPI is a practical and interpretable index that effectively signals likely outcomes and supports real-time coaching decisions; however, it’s not deterministic and should be further validated in diverse competitions.

    Match Outcome Prediction in 3x3 Basketball: Validating Team Performance Index and Benchmarking Against Shooting Efficiency and Shooting Value (Paris 2024 Olympics) · 2026 · DOI

  • Despite advances in computational analysis, the extent to which objectively computable NVB features reflect subjective human judgments remains unclear.

    Nonverbal Behaviour in Football: A 3D Pose-Based Analysis of Player Expressions and Observer Perceptions · 2026 · DOI

  • The absence of a well-accepted theoretical basis for the UOH, coupled with a lack of compelling empirical evidence in support of it, suggests important gaps in the literature.

    A Note on the Preferences of Sports Fans: Partisanship Versus Uncertainty of Outcome · 2023 · DOI

  • 6 billion euros in the 2020-2021 season (Deloitte, 2022), it is clear that the competition in football, whose global economic weight is gradually increasing, is no longer just limited to the sporting field but has expanded to include financial and marketing efforts.

    Fan Tokens as A Financial Source and Digital Marketing Tool in Football: An Analysis with The Entropy-Based Waspas Method · 2022 · DOI

  • Through analogy with a fictional decathlon competition—and with the understanding that sporting seasons are themselves a type of game—we identify three reasons why leading at the moment of cessation is insufficient to be crowned a victor (of an individual event) or a champion (of a season-long competition): doing so fails to respect some valuable skills, fails to allow for luck to play out in an interesting way that affects competitions, and fails to respect competitive strategies.

    Champions in the Age of COVID-19 · 2020 · DOI

  • Efforts to examine the drivers of DFS-specific participation remain scarce, with scholars having reported on the motives of traditional fantasy sport (TFS) consumers and hybrid consumers (i.

    Development and Assessment of a Scale to Measure Daily Fantasy Sport Motives · 2019 · DOI

  • Abstract In Australian football (AF), few studies have assessed combinations of pre- game factors and their relation to game outcomes (win/loss) in multivariable analyses.

    Multifactorial analysis of factors influencing elite australian football match outcomes: a machine learning approach · 2019 · DOI

  • Most D-III universities field a football team, yet little is known about how a football program can influence the quality of the student body or rate at which students graduate.

    Athleticism in NCAA D-III: It Ain’t Only Football That Matters · 2019 · DOI

  • Yet, despite its importance, to date, little is known about how an uncertain industry influences the creation of products or how organizations might improve their market position through IR.

    The Impact of Interorganizational Relationships on an Uncertain Industry: College Football Bowl Games · 2019 · DOI

  • Conversely, the limited research on crime in the National Football League (NFL), the type of organization we study, has focused largely on misbehavior off-the-field.

    What Happens on the Field Stays on the Field: Exploring the Link between Football Player Penalties and Criminal Arrests · 2016 · DOI

  • The model accounted for 43% of the variability in home advantage, the rest of which needs to be investigated after developing more precise measures for territoriality, the ethnic and cultural factors involved and the potential for referee bias.

    Components of home advantage in 157 national soccer leagues worldwide · 2014 · DOI

  • Whereas the direct effect of sponsor signage exposure on sponsor recall has been identified in several studies, attention to sponsor signage as the mediator of sponsorship information has not been investigated thoroughly.

    The Viewer’s Reception and Processing of Sponsorship Information in Sport Telecasts · 2012 · DOI

  • The authors find that competitive balance has not increased in college football since the end of World War II, and they find mixed evidence of scholarship limits’ effect on a range of measures of parity, including the standard deviation of winning percentages and Associated Press rankings.

    Ncaa Scholarship Limits and Competitive Balance in College Football · 2003 · DOI

  • On the other hand, the athlete competes in this ever-changing environment, and that is the situation in which he should be studied. Coaches and athletes have an important task to perform; usually there is insufficient time available to use much practice time for research studies.

    Sports Research Institute: A Workable Model at Pennsylvania State University · 1971 · DOI

  • constitution upon congress in express terms, while other provisions of the constitution probably impose a similar limitation upon the states. Practically all state constitutions limit the taking of land by eminent domain to the taking for a this NATIONAL MUNICIPAL LEAGUE 11 public use. The legal questions relate to the construction of the term “public use?” If the term is very narrowly limited it may be possible t o take no more land by condemnation than that actually required for the bed of a street when a street is opened or widened, or than is required for any other public purpose. If the power of the municipality is thuslimited, a public improvement sometimes becomes a curse rather than a blessing. When a new street, for example, is laid out through a plotted and improved section, small and irregular parcels of land are left fronting on the street, and the suitable improvement of abutting land is prevented, unless these parcels can be gathered into one ownership with sufficient adjoining land to form suitable parcels for improve- I t sometimes happens that such ment. remnants of land adjoining a new or widened thoroughfare are held by persons without power to sell, and improvement is indefinitely delayed, assessed values cannot increase, and the owners of adjoining property are burdened with heavy assessments with practically no compensating benefit. On an important avenue in the city of New York there is a strip of land a few inches wide and several hundred feet long, the title t o which is defective. The land cannot be sold, and it is practically impossible t o improve the land behind the strip because it has no access to the avenue. Many streets are permanently disfigured because of the small remnants left at the time the street was widened or opened. It would seem that it is as much a public purpose to acquire sufficient land bordering a new street as may be necessary to prevent the conditions described, as it is to acquire the land for the street itself. A study of European conditions discloses manifold other social purposes for which land has been acquired, adding to the health, comfort and beauty of the city, conserving the city’s resources, and increasing its revenue. LAWSON PURDY, Chairman. Richard Henry Dana, Esq., of Boston then read a paper, entitled “Antitoxin for Municipal Waste and Corruption.”’ The Hon. Charles J. Bonaparte, of Baltimore, read a paper on “Municipal Civil Service Reform.”’ THE PRESIDENT: I will call upon Professor Robert C. Brooks, of the University of Cincinnati, to read to us a paper upon “The German Imperial Increment Tax.” DR.

    National municipal League · 1912 · DOI

  • Third, limited by the cross-sectional data structure, this study fails to capture the dynamic feedback mechanism between player ownership and review count as it evolves over the game lifecycle, and does not distinguish the heterogeneous effects of game genres (e.

    Hype or quality? Determinants and prediction of player ownership on Steam · 2026 · DOI

  • Rules, regulations, and regulatory systems are central to societies, institutions, and organisms, yet surprisingly little is known about their evolution over long timescales.

    Three Centuries of the Laws of Cricket Reveal Core Principles of the Evolution of Regulatory Mechanisms · 2026

  • Another area for improvement for the present study is that the time-related data were not considered due to the lack of dataset diversity of the data provider.

    Determining the Contribution of Performance Variables to Game Outcomes in Elite Male Soccer · 2026 · DOI

  • Although pitch sequencing is a central topic in baseball analytics, previous studies have primarily focused on optimizing the final pitch within a single plate appearance, leaving the role of preceding setup pitches and their impact on long-term season-level performance insufficiently examined.

    Counterfactual Optimization of Baseball Pitch Sequences and Estimation of Its Impact on Season-Level Statistics · 2026

  • Thus, the Elo rating of Ararat-Armenia remains unknown in these matches. Thus, the Elo rating of Ararat-Armenia remains unknown in these matches. Thus, the Elo rating of Ararat-Armenia remains unknown in these matches.

    Are Penalty Shootouts Better Than a Coin Toss? Evidence From International Club Football in Europe · 2026 · DOI

  • Previous research on rule modification in the field of sport management is limited by the scope of rules considered and explanatory theoretical frameworks used.

    From Play to Policy: Examining Rule Modifications in Sport Through Organizational Learning and Performance Feedback Lenses · 2025 · DOI

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65 open questions have been extracted from the limitations and future-work passages of 3,130 Sports Analytics and Performance papers in our library. Each one below links back to the study that raised it, so you can read the original claim in context.

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