Sport is a competition in which winning is determined by scoring physical events, usually by placing a ball or puck into an opposing team’s goal. Typically, matches are divided into three or four periods of play that last for 48 or 60 minutes (excluding potential overtime). The team with the highest score at the end of the match is declared the winner. Some sports have additional scoring procedures, such as the awarding of points for specific actions by the judging panel and of faults assessed during the performance by the athlete, such as exceeding the maximum allowable time in biathlon or failing to complete all targets in equestrian show jumping.

Despite increasing interest in quantifying and modeling scoring dynamics within professional sports, relatively little is known about what common patterns or principles cut across different types of sports. We investigate this question using a unique and comprehensive dataset of scoring events from college football, professional American football (NFL), professional hockey and professional basketball games. We find that scoring tempo – when scoring events occur – closely follows a Poisson process with a sport-specific rate, while scoring balance – how often one team wins an event – more closely approximates a Bernoulli model with a parameter that effectively varies over the course of gameplay.

Once you have chosen your Sport Live Scores app you can add it to a Channel or a Playlist that will display on your digital screens. You can also view the app in action by selecting ‘Preview’.