from the hell-hath-no-fury-like-an-athlete-scorned dept.
Professional Athletes Perform Better against Former Clubs, According to Research:
A team of Russian researchers affiliated with the HSE University, RANEPA, and NES found professional athletes to perform better against their former clubs. At least in some circumstances, emotions seem to have a greater effect on their performance than knowledge of the opponent's tactics. The study's findings are published in the Journal of Behavioural and Experimental Economics and may be useful for coaches, sports managers, and bookmakers.
By hiring a competitor's former employee, companies bring in their social capital, knowledge and skills, potentially weakening the competition. Since measuring employee performance may be difficult in a typical business environment, this study examined the sphere of professional sports, where such data is abundant, to track changes in athletes' performance against their former teams.
The study used econometric models on game data of the National Basketball Association (NBA), the National Hockey League (NHL), and six major European football leagues, available from the NBA.com, Hockey-Reference and Understat. The authors examined player performance data over time, taking into account history of transactions and players' matches against their former clubs. The variables included the dates and venues of the games, players' home and opposing teams, playing time, basic individual game statistics, and several more advanced performance indicators.
[...] The researchers assumed that the knowledge of opponents' tactics and the additional motivation both contributed to athletes' better performance against former clubs. While these two factors are likely to complement each other, the researchers ultimately found emotions to prevail over a better understanding of the other team's game.
Playing against former teammates can be a source of additional motivation for athletes. According to American football defensive tackle Barry Cofield, 'Realistically, it's not like any other game, especially when you first play that former team'. These matches arouse strong emotions, causing athletes to give the game their best. Apparently, emotions such as anxiety and anger have the greatest effect on loaned athletes' performance.
[...] 'Employees are motivated to perform better against their former employers. Situations in which one's former and current employers compete are not limited to sports but include bidding for contracts, power struggles between political parties, and marketing campaigns.
Journal Reference:
Artur Assanskiy, Daniil Shaposhnikov, Igor Tylkin, and Gleb Vasiliev, Prove them wrong: Do professional athletes perform better when facing their former clubs?, J Behav Exp Econ, 98, 2022. DOI: 10.1016/j.socec.2022.101879
(Score: 3, Interesting) by looorg on Friday July 22 2022, @01:30PM (1 child)
It's interesting but also seems somewhat obvious. If you used to play for club A and then join club B you bring all the knowledge of Club A with you to your new home. So you know the players, you know their playbook etc. I don't know if it's so much hell hath no fury like a scorned player but more like they have the playbook with them. It's probably the same as why do pro clubs scout each others teams etc. To gather knowledge. I guess the hell hath fury angle could come in if you are sacked from your former team and then picked up. Then there might be some minor performance boost as you want to stick it to them.
Question is does it retain value over other fields? After all in the grand scheme of things there just are not that many pro-athletes. Does your engineers or other worker perform better if they are in projects competing against others they used to work with/for? Interesting then that a lot of corporations have contract clauses that prevent people leaving to go work for the competition. So they are afraid that they'll bring knowledge and the playbook with them. I guess that would be harder for say NBA/NHL/NFL players etc since they athlete knowledge just isn't transferable in that regard. It's not like they can take another sports gig but not in a competitors club.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 22 2022, @02:15PM
According to the article, they say that the common assumption is that former players do better because of their familiarity with their previous team, but they said that they found that the emotional effect is larger than the familiarity effect. For instance, they found that former players don't necessarily play better, but they participate more (play harder, take more shots on goal, etc.) than they did on their old team and that they (or their new team) weren't having measurable successes by exploiting any newfound weaknesses.
(Score: 2) by Opportunist on Friday July 22 2022, @04:25PM
Afraid he might have to play against his former team some time soon?
(link [newsweek.com])