Between Academic Research, Scientific Diffusion, and the Football Market Data Science in the Study of Football – the Swiss Case of the Football Observatory

Abstract

The article focuses on the experience of a study center dedicated to the statistical monitoring of professional football for the past fifteen years. Based on a face-to-face follow-up at the Swiss Football Observatory, we propose to describe and analyze the work of a team of geographers who specialized in data mining to radiograph demographic, performance and financial elements of contemporary football-spectacle. We argue that, coming from the academic environment, the responsible analysts approach the agents and institutions they intend to observe, producing an analytical duality, if not an ambiguity: at times it is understood that the indexes and figures raised serve for a critical understanding of the directions taken by exponentially marketed and concentrated professionalism; at others such approach determines their object of investigation, with research and consulting geared progressively to meet the interests of those involved with managing and promoting football in the 21st century.