No evidence of first-mover advantage in a large sample of penalty shootouts

David Pipke

Journal of Economic Psychology, 2025, vol. 108, issue C

Abstract: Conflicting evidence exists regarding a first-mover advantage in soccer shootouts, where increased pressure on second-moving teams may lead to choking. While some studies support this claim, others refute it, with the lack of consensus likely due to limited sample sizes. An analysis of around 7,000 soccer penalty shootouts and 74,000 kicks finds no evidence of a first- or second-mover advantage in winning probability. Equivalence testing further rejects any deviation greater than 1.8 percentage points from a 50% win probability for first-kicking teams. A parallel analysis of ice hockey shootouts finds no significant advantage or disadvantage for either the first- or second-moving team.

Keywords: First-mover advantage; Choking; Penalty-shootout; Soccer; Ice hockey (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D91 J01 L83 Z20 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0167487025000285
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:joepsy:v:108:y:2025:i:c:s0167487025000285

DOI: 10.1016/j.joep.2025.102816

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Economic Psychology is currently edited by G. Antonides and D. Read

More articles in Journal of Economic Psychology from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().