Why Sky Bet should have been more sympathetic to customers over Harry Maguire tackles
Former Perform staffer and experienced football analyst, Stephen Taylor-Matthews, says the Maguire tackles were open to interpretation
The evolution of player props has been great for the betting industry – a chance to offer more markets and engage customers in every kick of the game. Unfortunately, as we discovered this week, nothing is ever as easy as the industry would like it to be.
Did Manchester United’s Harry Maguire make two tackles? An opinion piece on EGR this week suggested Sky Bet were right to stand by their original decision. The use of Opta brings a legitimacy to the outcome and interpretation of statistics, and as Jeevan Jeyaratnam noted in his article: “The next phase of the education of punters needs to start somewhere”. Maybe it does, but I don’t think this was an obvious example.
At the crux of this argument lies the definition of what a tackle, interception or recovery is. According to Opta, in the terms and conditions of Sky Bet, the definition of a tackle is:
Where a player connects with the ball in a ground challenge where he successfully takes the ball away from the player in possession. The tackled player must clearly be in possession of the ball before the tackle is made. It is not a tackle, when a player cuts out a pass by any means.
Using these definitions, we should analyse one of the instances that disgruntled customers have flagged up. Note, this has been done using the UK historical TV feed, as Opta would also have done.
64:07 – Abraham receives a pass, Maguire instigates trying to block Abraham and initiates a tackle. Abraham tries to pass unsuccessfully twice and loses possession with Maguire striking the ball away from Abraham to a recovering Man Utd player and gaining possession. According to Opta statistics, Abraham made an unsuccessful touch with Harry Maguire recovering possession for United.
@SkyBet is this not classed as a tackle by maguire? pic.twitter.com/LNLYdUmBEa
— Hardiac (@hardiac79) August 11, 2019
If you are an analyst this is clear cut, based on how you are trained to register and measure statistics but if you look at the wider context, would Abraham have made an “unsuccessful touch” if Maguire wasn’t putting him under pressure and trying to gain possession through a tackle?
Probably not, therefore Maguire’s intervention had a significant impact on Abraham losing the ball and United regaining possession. From my perspective the whole process was a successful tackle from Maguire and customers have a right to feel aggrieved by Opta’s analysis.
Statistics are supposed to be objective but still most of the time they are actually subjective, and analysts are asked to work within a very tight framework that’s also subjective for the majority of the time. I can genuinely see why an Opta analyst would read a game in this manner but also why a customer would be unhappy with the outcome. In this vein, Sky Bet should have been open to further deliberation because it is a biased opinion they are relying upon.
In my view they should have given customers the benefit of the doubt in this instance. This is a new market for many punters, it’s the first week of the Premier League season and the goodwill alone would outweigh the cost. It’s no bad thing to listen to the different perspectives of customers on such an ambiguous point.
It also goes to show that live, in-depth statistic markets can be a potential minefield for operators and customers alike, with further consideration and clarity needed regarding the outcome of these events and their interpretation.
Stephen Taylor-Matthews is MD of platform provider GoatGaming