Science AI Journal
Economics, Econometrics and Finance · Research topic

Open research questions in Sports Analytics and Performance

362 gap statements mined from Sports Analytics and Performance papers in our 7.9M-paper local library, which holds 3,848 papers on the topic — drawn mostly from each paper's own stated research gap, future-work, challenge and limitation notes, and its abstract. The ones listed below are a selection still marked open; each names the study that raised it, with a DOI link where the paper has one.

Choosing where to publish on Sports Analytics and Performance? See the ranked Economics journals.

What the literature leaves open

  • Prior work focuses on accuracy, uncertainty, or competitive balance, but does not explicitly address procedural fairness. The gap is in evaluating how fixture asymmetries distort outcome probabilities relative to a fair baseline.

    A Monte carlo framework for procedural fixture fairness evaluation in league competitions · 2026 · DOI

  • Future work will focus on extending the benchmark to additional model families, incorporating retrieval-augmented forecasting architectures, and investigating the integration of large language models with traditional statistical forecasting techniques to further improve prediction accuracy in large-scale international tournaments.

    Forecasting the FIFA World Cup 2026 with Large Language Models: A Benchmark of Reasoning, Web-Augmented, Agentic, and Open-Weight AI Systems · 2026 · DOI

  • The study notes that the analysis is limited to a single club and player, which may introduce selection bias. It acknowledges that the findings may not be generalizable to average card-event patterns across La Liga. The study identifies the challenge of accounting for the effect of VAR on disciplinary outcomes, given the differing findings across leagues.

    Late-match card-event rates and score-state associations in Barcelona La Liga matches featuring Lionel Messi: a retrospective analysis of StatsBomb open event data · 2026 · DOI

  • Traditional methods for athlete evaluation have limitations. There is a need for objective, data-driven approaches to support athlete assessment. Artificial intelligence models can help address this gap.

    Artificial Intelligence in the Selection of Top-Performing Athletes for Team Sports: A Proof-of-Concept Predictive Modeling Study · 2025 · DOI

  • The need for a comprehensive understanding of the interdependence between traditional sports infrastructure and technological advancements. The challenge of developing a conceptual model that explains the process of technology innovations in the sports ecosystem.

    The “Clockwork” Model for Deployment Technology Innovations in Sports Industry Ecosystem: Holistic Approach · 2024 · DOI

  • In this study, they were selected through model comparison, whereas future research may consider more flexible formulations in which the decay parameters are estimated jointly with the other model parameters.

    The impact of weakness and recovery time on recurrent injuries in NBA: a dynamic event-count model with transient carryover effect · 2026 · DOI

  • Trust in public institutions outside sport is the tier at which the term spillover is warranted, retaining 36.

    The spillover effects of fairness events in competitive sports events on audience social trust: a quasi natural experimental analysis · 2026 · DOI

  • Player attribution in American football remains an open problem due to the complex nature of 22 players interacting on the field, but the granularity of player tracking data provides ample opportunity for novel approaches.

    NFL ghosts: A framework for evaluating defender positioning with conditional density estimation · 2026 · DOI

  • Introduction Football player ratings contain overlapping attributes, but it remains unclear how these attributes form broader capabilities and how those capabilities relate to different economic outcomes across positions.

    Determinants of players’ economic valuation: a structural equation model of the five major European football leagues · 2026 · DOI

  • Future research should focus on the development of new methods and tools for football analysis. The use of big data and artificial intelligence in football analysis is a promising area of research. The study suggests that expert judgement will continue to play an essential role in football analysis.

    Evolution of Performance Analysis in Football: From Intuitive Observation to Big Data and Artificial Intelligence · 2026 · DOI

  • There is a need to review the literature on the evolution of performance analysis in football. The use of big data and artificial intelligence in football analysis is a relatively new development. The study highlights the importance of expert judgement in football analysis.

    Evolution of Performance Analysis in Football: From Intuitive Observation to Big Data and Artificial Intelligence · 2026 · DOI

  • The lack of a framework for understanding the governance of sports public opinion. The need for a model that can elucidate how opinion salience, adverse impacts, policy-based incentives and sanctions, and multi-actor coordination shape strategy selection and evolutionary trajectories.

    Evolutionary game and simulation analysis of collaborative governance of sports public opinion · 2026 · DOI

  • The need to choose models that are balanced in accuracy, interpretability, and computational complexity in conditions of high stochasticity of sports data. The lack of flexibility of traditional statistical approaches to describe complex nonlinear dependencies in the data.

    A comparative analysis of machine learning methods with the application of the Kolmogorov-Gabor polynomial for forecasting sports event outcomes · 2026 · DOI

  • The lack of understanding of the factors that determine revenue variation in football clubs in Mozambique. The need for a quantitative analysis of the revenue of football clubs in Mozambique. The need to identify the determinants of revenue variation in football clubs in Mozambique.

    Fatores determinantes da variação de receitas nos clubes de futebol em Moçambique · 2026 · DOI

  • The full multi-stage model is intractable for realistic tournament sizes. The SAA approach requires a vast number of scenarios to achieve convergence to the true objective value. VSS experiments have limited applicability in practice because they require finding the solution of a stochastic formulation with all possible scenarios.

    Stochastic referee assignment in sports tournaments · 2026 · DOI

  • It notes that the introduction of VAR may have affected disciplinary outcomes, but findings across leagues differ. The study aims to investigate the relationship between card events and match periods, using a large dataset of La Liga matches.

    Late-match card-event rates and score-state associations in Barcelona La Liga matches featuring Lionel Messi: a retrospective analysis of StatsBomb open event data · 2026 · DOI

  • Although this represents the established baseline in multinational tournament designs, it does not account for country-specific birth seasonality in the general population, which may introduce minor baseline variations.

    Birth Quarter, Playing Position, and Market Value in Elite International Football: Evidence from the FIFA World Cup 2026 · 2026 · DOI

  • The NCAA cartel ensures that athletes receive compensation limited to the cost of attending college, which prevents football programmes from competing for athlete’s services on a price (compensation) basis.

    NCAA football coach compensation and non-price competition for football players · 2024 · DOI

  • Extending the findings to other discrete-scoring sports. Applying finite mixture models to other domains with heterogeneous and heavy-tailed distributions. Investigating the use of continuous mixture models in football goal distribution modeling.

    Finite mixture models for modeling football goal distributions · 2026 · DOI

  • The reliance on synthetic rather than real-world data, - The synthetic cohorts were deliberately constructed with strong between-group separability, - Limited generalizability to actual athlete…

    Artificial Intelligence in the Selection of Top-Performing Athletes for Team Sports: A Proof-of-Concept Predictive Modeling Study · 2025 · DOI

  • Comparing the effectiveness of different models or approaches to technology deployment in sports industries, - exploring the ethical implications of technology in sports, - exploring the integration and impact of emerging technologies, - understanding the perspectives of various stakeholders, including fans, athletes, and sports…

    The “Clockwork” Model for Deployment Technology Innovations in Sports Industry Ecosystem: Holistic Approach · 2024 · DOI

  • Comparator contexts produced mixed results and generated, rather than tested, a task-structured hypothesis.

    Predictive judgment, continuity baselines, and earned deference in elite sport selection · 2026 · DOI

  • La investigación sugiere que futuras investigaciones deben considerar la cultura editorial de cada medio y su impacto en la evaluación del rendimiento deportivo. La investigación sugiere que futuras investigaciones deben analizar la convergencia entre sistemas de evaluación humanos y algorítmicos en diferentes contextos deportivos.

    El impacto de las aplicaciones estadísticas en el periodismo deportivo: estudio comparativo entre valoraciones algorítmicas y humanas en el fútbol de élite · 2026 · DOI

  • La investigación identifica una brecha en la comparación entre evaluaciones periodísticas y algorítmicas del rendimiento de jugadores de fútbol. La investigación identifica una brecha en la comprensión de la cultura editorial de cada medio y su impacto en la evaluación del rendimiento deportivo.

    El impacto de las aplicaciones estadísticas en el periodismo deportivo: estudio comparativo entre valoraciones algorítmicas y humanas en el fútbol de élite · 2026 · DOI

  • To analyze the revenue of other football clubs in Mozambique. To compare the revenue of football clubs in Mozambique with those in other countries. To develop strategies to increase the revenue of football clubs in Mozambique.

    Fatores determinantes da variação de receitas nos clubes de futebol em Moçambique · 2026 · DOI

Most-cited papers in Sports Analytics and Performance

Most recent work

Find a gap in your own Sports Analytics and Performance sub-topic

This page shows what the Sports Analytics and Performance literature already flags as unresolved. To narrow it to your specific question, search the Research Gap Finder: the search is free with a free account and lists the papers closest to your topic first. Unlocking that topic (50 credits, charged once) fills the comparison table from our 7.9M-paper local library and writes the gaps from its rows.

Open the Research Gap Finder →

Related topics in Economics, Econometrics and Finance

Energy, Environment, Economic Growth
1,278 open questions
Labor market dynamics and wage inequality
819 open questions
Global trade and economics
660 open questions
Health Systems, Economic Evaluations, Quality of Life
616 open questions
Regional Economics and Spatial Analysis
581 open questions
Housing, Finance, and Neoliberalism
568 open questions
Healthcare Policy and Management
554 open questions
Monetary Policy and Economic Impact
512 open questions
Open questions raised by papers listed on this page include: (1) Trust in public institutions outside sport is the tier at which the term spillover is warranted, retaining 36 (“The spillover effects of fairness events in competitive sports events on…”, 2026); (2) Introduction Football player ratings contain overlapping attributes, but it remains unclear how these attributes form broader capabilities and how those capabilities relate to different economic outcomes across positions (“Determinants of players’ economic valuation: a structural equation model of the…”, 2026); (3) Future research should focus on the development of new methods and tools for football analysis (“Evolution of Performance Analysis in Football: From Intuitive Observation to…”, 2026); (4) The lack of a framework for understanding the governance of sports public opinion (“Evolutionary game and simulation analysis of collaborative governance of sports…”, 2026); (5) The lack of flexibility of traditional statistical approaches to describe complex nonlinear dependencies in the data (“A comparative analysis of machine learning methods with the application of the…”, 2026). 362 gap statements have been mined from Sports Analytics and Performance papers in our 7.9M-paper local library, which holds 3,848 papers on the topic; the gaps come from whichever of those papers state one. They are mostly the research gaps the authors state and the papers' abstracts, plus future-work, limitations and challenges passages. The ones listed below are a selection still marked open; each names the study that raised it, with a DOI link where the paper has one, so you can read the original claim in context.

Tools for your next paper

Gaps & Literature SearchFind open questions in any field — 1,100,000+ open gaps mined from our own library.Pre-CheckIs your paper ready? Acceptance odds for top, mid and open/emerging journals, in seconds.Journal FinderA ranked shortlist of target journals from a 17,500-venue index.Duplicate Publication CheckerCheck for prior publication across 7 sources and our local library.Citation GeneratorFreeA DOI or title → APA, MLA, Vancouver, Chicago, BibTeX, RIS. No signup.Graphical Abstract MakerFreeTurn your findings into a colorblind-safe graphical abstract.

How Pre-Check worksHow AI Review works

Compare the category — Honest roundups of the AI research tools, ours listed alongside the alternatives.

Command palette

Jump anywhere, run any action.