Colour by Numbers: Shades of sporting success

Being a massive stats ‘The World Cup is a very complicated tournament – six games, seven if you make it to the final – and maybe if you lose one game you’re out, even if you’re the best’ – Pele

Football. Whether you love it or hate it it’s been hard to avoid this summer and although I would normally describe myself as a fair-weather football fan at best (really I just like excuses to drink in pubs) I have been loving the world cup this year. There’s been a shedtonne of goals which always keeps things interesting and the introduction of VAR means that no one can get away with any dirty, underhand tactics (I’m looking at you Columbia).

What is an actual big love of mine is trends and statistics so CT Shirts and I have been looking at how different shirt colours relate to success across all the major sporting tournaments.  Red is considered a dominant colour supposedly striking fear in the opposition and is a dominant winning colour across all sports, which begs the question, if we’d been able to wear red against Croatia, perhaps the outcome might have been different?

Interestingly 55% of world cup winners have played in blue, so Lady Luck was always on France’s side.

Despite our devastating exit from the tournament, I love the fact that the sale of waistcoats and navy suits have shot up by 35% since the start of the world cup thanks to Mr Southgate. So even though we won’t take home the trophy on Sunday at least there will be some dapper looking people around.
Check out the infographic below for more interesting stats on winning colour themes.