Wimbledon is one of the most popular annual sports tournament. In the Gentlemen's Single 2009 the top seeded and defending champion Rafael Nadal withdrew from the tournament due to injury days prior to the tournament. Here, we try to analyze the effects of Nadal's withdrawal especially on the ability/strength of the main competitor Roger Federer by using bookmakers expectancies to estimate the unknown abilities of the players and compare them for two different odds sets. The comparison shows that the bookmakers did not incorporate Nadal's withdrawal adequately, assigning too high expected winning probabilities to Federer and Murray. / Series: Research Report Series / Department of Statistics and Mathematics

Bookmakers odds are an easily available source of ``prospective" information that is thus often employed for forecasting the outcome of sports events. To investigate the statistical properties of bookmakers odds from a variety of bookmakers for a number of different potential outcomes of a sports event, a class of mixed-effects models is explored, providing information about both consensus and (dis)agreement across bookmakers. In an empirical study for the UEFA Champions League, the most prestigious football club competition in Europe, model selection yields a simple and intuitive model with team-specific means for capturing consensus and team-specific standard deviations reflecting agreement across bookmakers. The resulting consensus forecast performs well in practice, exhibiting high correlation with the actual tournament outcome. Furthermore, the teams' agreement can be shown to be strongly correlated with the predicted consensus and can thus be incorporated in a more parsimonious model for agreement while preserving the same consensus fit. / Series: Research Report Series / Department of Statistics and Mathematics

Thesis (M.S.)--Brigham Young University. Dept. of Mathematics, 2004. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 65).

Thesis--Freie Universität Berlin. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 315-340) and index.

Dissertation (MBus) -- AUT University, 2007. / Includes bibliographical references. Also held in print (x, 114 leaves : ill. ; 30 cm.) in City Campus Theses Collection (T 338.47796 LI)

Thesis--Freie Universität Berlin. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 315-340) and index.

No description available.

No description available.

Thesis (M.A.)--University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 2003. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 113-114).

Thesis (MA (Political Science))--Stellenbosch University, 2008. / This study focuses on the bidding for sports mega-events, their subsequent planning, and the politics surrounding these processes. The specific examples analysed here are those of the FIFA Football World Cup™ in Germany in 2006, and the forthcoming 2010 World Cup to be hosted by South Africa. The events are examined against a backdrop of increasing competition to host mega-events, spurred on by a widespread belief in the economic benefits that result from hosting, with a frequent disregard for the social and economic costs involved. Four central research questions are addressed in the course of this thesis. The first is the role of corporate actors and their influence on mega-events, the second is the question of what processes characterise both the bidding and planning stages of an event, including the main actors, agendas and discourses involved in both of these stages. Thirdly, the significance of hosting the World Cup in both the German and South African case is examined, and fourthly, the long-term implications of South Africa’s hosting of the 2010 World Cup, both for the country itself and for developing nations more broadly, is considered. The research methodology used for this thesis is predominately qualitative, and utilises mostly secondary sources, including books, academic articles, press articles, and information off the official websites of the football organisations involved. The main findings of this thesis are that while both countries in question had seemingly compelling reasons for hosting the World Cup, and while benefits can stem from the event, the longevity of such benefits is questionable, and the costs involved can be especially heavy in a developing context such as that of South Africa. Furthermore, those that stand to benefit the most from the events include transnational corporate actors, with the implication that significant financial gains never reach the host economy. Nevertheless, an ever-increasing willingness on the part of numerous nations to host mega-events means that the German and South African cases can provide lessons for future hosts, and South Africa’s World Cup has particular significance as a test case for mega-events hosted by developing nations. Finally, this thesis stresses the need for further research in this field. It also aims to break some new ground by examining the commonalities and contrasts to be found in the bidding and planning processes of a mega-event as carried out by a developed and a developing nation.