Meeting expectations at the 2016 Rio Olympic Games: Country potential and competitiveness

Abstract

Objective: Develop a framework to measure the extent to which countries meet their performance expectations at major sporting events using economists, experts and fan knowledge. Method: Long-term expectations based on socioeconomic potential are calculated using sport-agnostic econometric modelling. Short-term expectations based on performance and competitiveness are calculated using betting odds, which incorporate both expert-knowledge and “wisdom of the crowd”. Robust statistics based on the chi-squared distribution are used to measure the extent to which countries’ expectations are met. Our method is tested using real data from the Rio 2016 Summer Olympic Games. Results: Twelve countries over- or under-performed in terms of meeting either long- or short-term expectations. Conclusions: Uzbekistan was the only country that exceeded both long- and short-term expectations.