Why 'on the beach' teams keep stealing points

So in professional gambling, we have long known that there are incentive effects when it comes to team performances late in the season. Michael Caley recently wrote about this for the public, but those of us on the professional side have been aware that DGF/OTB (don’t give a fuck or on the beach) matches exist for 15-20 years. (And probably longer than that, but the quant analysis has been around at least that long.)

Except recently, it hasn’t felt like that. Teams with nothing to play for keep winning important matches against teams who still need results, especially in the Premier League.

I have a suspicion for why that is that I will explain in a minute, but FIRST…

The Transfer Flow conference is this week, Friday, May 22 at the Royal National Hotel in London. You can buy tickets here for the industry professional session in the afternoon, the fan session in the evening, or both. The fan session will be a live podcast where Patrick and I rebuild two Premier League teams, then goof around and have fun like we usually do on the podcast. Expect both slides and laughs.

Stick with me here, because this requires a story.

When I started in football, player contracts were spectacularly dumb. They were fixed to one pay rate (meaning they rarely had relegation clauses) and riddled with dumb player incentives that rarely aligned with team incentives.

Example: a forward had bonus per goal scored in his contract, which means by passing the ball to a teammate to take a better shot, he potentially cost himself money in the process, and potentially costing the team goals as well by making the forward more selfish.

It was so bad that at one point a lawyer named Ian Lynam started doing seminars for teams on how to create better player contracts. Said lawyer’s firm has since gone on to become the Team Sale/Acquisition law firm of choice across most of sports (they helped with Chelsea, AC Milan, Everton and sundry others in recent times), so I guess he did alright for himself.

At some point, giant teams also began to be relegated from the Premier League despite their ownership thinking that was impossible. (Aston Villa and Newcastle come to mind, but it’s much broader than that as the Premier League became competitive beyond simple wage/budget metrics.) Which meant teams went from WOO, PREMIER LEAGUE TV MONEY BABY to OMG THIS PITTANCE IS WHAT CHAMPIONSHIP TEAMS GET?!? almost every year.

A similar thing happened when good teams who were always attached to the Champions League teat suddenly found themselves in the Premier League wasteland outside of European football. (In England, the usually refer to that area of the country as The Midlands, but teams from all over started to find themselves in that position.)

As such, and with careful guidance from aforementioned legal eagles, teams started to realise the error of their ways. One key adjustment involved splitting player contracts into base and performance variable sections. These days smart player contracts are about 67% base fixed pay and 33% pay that changes depending on how the team performs. Win a valuable Cup competition and make the CL, and players are flush. Finish in the lower table doldrums and you cost yourself and your teammates a bunch of money.

However, it’s not just Cup competitions that contribute to the bonus pool. Many teams tie the variable pay to where they finish in the league table, with each position adding significant extra money to the pool. And a few teams (read: sickos) also pay players and coaches extra money based on their set piece goal differential. If you want to get people to buy into weird new ideas that make them do extra work, you probably need to attach some money to the concept to get their full attention.

ANYWAY… this is all relevant because it helps explain why we are seeing so many hard fought matches in recent seasons from teams that apparently have nothing to play for.

From just this past weekend: Newcastle are locked into midtable obscurity this season, but they still put a tidy little whuppin’ West Ham, a squad fighting for Premier League survival.

The same could be said of Crystal Palace, a team who I feel like packed their bags a couple of times this season already, but who managed to give Brentford everything they could handle in a 2-2 draw. If the Bees had won, they would have vaulted above Brighton for 7th, just one point behind 6th place Bournemouth, who play City midweek. The Cherries still have a backdoor shot at Liverpool’s Champions League spot if they win out and get some help.

Weirdly, even the relegated Wolves team have stayed remarkably competitive across most matches in the second half of the season, despite the fact that they and Burnley have been p(doomed) the entire time.

The PL is both higher quality and more competitive than it has ever been, and almost every team is fighting to the bitter end, probably not for competitive reasons (though the idealists might want it that way), but more likely to secure extra briefcases full of cash.

—TK

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