Sport score is an abstract measure of the performance of a competitor in a sport discipline. Many sports have point-based scoring systems in which the competing athletes accrue points based on their relative performance in the competition and the competitor with the highest total score is declared the winner of the event. This scoring system may be based on an abstract quantity like points or a more natural measurement such as distance or duration, for example in basket and net sports where the objective is to place a ball through a basket or hoop.

There is increasing interest in quantifying and modeling the dynamics of scoring events within professional sports games, yet relatively little is known about whether common patterns or principles cut across different sports. This article uses a comprehensive dataset (timing and attribution information on every scoring event in all league games over the past 9-10 seasons) to investigate these questions. It reveals that scoring tempo (when the game’s scoring events occur) follows a common Poisson process with a sport-specific rate and that scoring balance (how often teams win scoring events) reflects a simple Bernoulli process whose parameter varies as a function of the team’s lead size.

Aside from basketball and rugby, which have the most complex scoring systems in the world, the vast majority of sports rely on one or more of two common types of score: a fixed number of timed rounds with an agreed-upon winner determined by accumulating a certain number of points sooner than the opponent; and a set of scoring rules based on blows or other criteria that result in winning and losing competitors achieving a higher or lower score than their rivals.