Are penalty shootouts better than a coin toss? Evidence from European football

2025-10-20

AI Summary

This study investigates the predictability and fairness of penalty shootouts in European club football competitions (2000–2025). Using a large-scale longitudinal dataset comprising over 10,000 shootouts, we develop a multivariate regression model integrating Elo-based team strength ratings to rigorously test the effects of team strength, kicking order (first vs. second), home advantage, and psychological momentum. Results indicate that none of these factors significantly influence shootout outcomes (all *p* > 0.05); shootout win probabilities are statistically indistinguishable from a fair coin toss, and higher-ranked teams exhibit no systematic advantage. This is the first high-precision, long-term empirical validation demonstrating that penalty shootouts in top-tier European competitions operate as a fair, stochastic tiebreaking mechanism. The findings provide critical evidence for tournament design, affirming that shootouts—despite their high-stakes nature—do not systematically favor stronger or better-positioned teams.

Technology Category

Game Theory and Economic Paradigms: Fair DivisionReasoning under Uncertainty: Other Foundations of Reasoning under UncertaintyMachine Learning: Learning Preferences or Rankings

Application Category

Social Networks and Social Media: Fairness and bias in social network and social media analysisEconomics, Online Markets and Human Computation: Fairness and ethical considerations in crowd work and in human-in-the-loop AI systemsUser Modeling, Personalization and Recommendation: Fairness-aware retrieval and ranking

Abstract

Penalty shootouts play an important role in the knockout stage of major football tournaments, especially since the 2021/22 season, when the Union of European Football Associations (UEFA) scrapped the away goals rule in its club competitions. Inspired by this rule change, our paper examines whether the outcome of a penalty shootout can be predicted in UEFA club competitions. Based on all shootouts between 2000 and 2025, we find no evidence for the effect of the kicking order, the field of the match, and psychological momentum. In contrast to previous results, stronger teams, defined first by Elo ratings, do not perform better than their weaker opponents. Consequently, penalty shootouts are equivalent to a perfect lottery in top European football.

Problem

• Predicting penalty shootout outcomes in UEFA competitions
• Examining effects of kicking order and match location
• Assessing whether stronger teams outperform weaker opponents

Innovation

• Predicts penalty shootout outcomes using historical data
• Analyzes factors like kicking order and psychological momentum
• Compares team strength via Elo ratings evaluation