How Nerds Contribute to the Growth of the Game
A roundup of undergraduate soccer research.
I got my first big break in the soccer business as a data analysis intern for Orlando City and Orlando Pride while I was still in college, studying statistics. Joining a pro club during undergrad was a win-win: as I took more advanced courses, I was able to apply those skills to my work at the club, and getting front office experience helped contextualize what I learned in the classroom within the real world. For my junior year tutorial in statistics in 2017, I even had the chance to turn some of the work I did in Orlando into a research paper on efficient salary apportionment in Major League Soccer. That paper from 2017 served as the foundation for a lot of my subsequent work in sports, including turning Gotham FC into the first pro women’s club to truly adopt Moneyball as a key component of its sporting strategy, which led to an NWSL championship in 2023.
I believe that academic research plays a big role in influencing every professional field, and my career has shown that soccer is no exception. In this issue of Seeing the Present, I’m sharing my junior tutorial paper to illustrate how being a huge nerd put me in the position to play a part in one of the most improbable rags-to-riches stories in American soccer history.
And because I believe the next generation of nerds can have a similar impact, I’m also highlighting recent research done by two brilliant undergrads whom I’ve had the opportunity to work with over the last few years: Lily Bryant, a graduating senior at Princeton, and Paton Roberts, a graduating senior at Harvard. Lily’s thesis also focuses on player compensation in MLS, while Paton’s explores fan culture in the NWSL.
The abstracts for all three papers are below, lightly edited to fit the STP style guide. If you want to read either of Lily’s or Paton’s full theses, you can email them directly to ask!
Modeling Major League Soccer Salary Data (Goldberg, 2017)
What role, if any, do performance metrics play in apportioning salaries to players in Major League Soccer? What role should they play?
In their 2013 book about statistics in soccer, The Numbers Game, Chris Anderson and David Sally detail several ways in which soccer has been more reluctant than other sports to embrace the tools of statistical analysis. The most important reason is perhaps the disdain for numbers shared by many coaches and front offices, who would rather rely on “conventional wisdom” in their decision-making process.
I believe that the prospect of saving money would be enough to convince front offices to adopt data-driven approaches. An analysis of salary data in Major League Soccer is ideal for this purpose because the data is publicly available and American sports are generally receptive of the use of statistics as a competitive advantage. Given the marginal role of statistical analysis in soccer, there is reason to believe that salaries are apportioned based on “conventional wisdom” proxies for performance rather than on-field performance metrics. This paper aims to identify the inefficiencies in the MLS salary market, allowing teams to exploit them to their advantage.
The Price of Performance: A Principal Component-Based Analysis of Marginal Revenue Product in Major League Soccer
Lily Bryant (Princeton ’25, Economics)
Player compensation in professional sports is assumed to reflect on-field value, yet this relationship is less clear in leagues where individual performance is difficult to isolate or where institutional constraints shape wage structures. In Major League Soccer (MLS), compensation is determined within a system that centralizes contract ownership and imposes strict salary regulations. My thesis investigates the relationship between player salaries in the MLS and the value players contribute on the field. Specifically, it estimates each player’s Marginal Revenue Product (MRP)—a measure of the additional revenue a player generates for their team—to evaluate whether compensation aligns with individual performance.
Using detailed data on individual on-field performance, the analysis constructs performance indexes inspired by Principal Component Analysis (PCA) to represent key dimensions of play. These indexes are used to trace the pathway from individual contributions to team performance, from team performance to competitive success, and from success to revenue. The estimated MRPs are then compared to actual salary figures to assess the alignment between contribution and compensation.
The findings reveal a disconnect: while high-profile attackers are often paid in excess of their estimated MRP, a substantial majority of players—particularly those in midfield and defensive roles—are undercompensated. Approximately three quarters of players in the MLS earn at least 5% less than their MRP suggests, indicating that MLS salaries reflect more than just performance-based economic value. These results point to the influence of positional visibility, marketability, and structural wage-setting mechanisms on compensation in a league where performance is not the sole currency of value.
Surveying the Field: An Exploration of the Culture of Fandom in the National Women’s Soccer League
Paton Roberts (Harvard ‘25, Social Studies)
Alongside the employees in the front office, who work on sponsorships, game day operations, player recruitment, and more, fans create the culture of a team. When teams host themed games, honoring events like Pride Month or holidays like Juneteenth, these three stakeholders come together to participate in and organize the game days: the front office’s work to plan the game, the supporters’ groups crafting the environment, and the individual fans filling the bulk of the stadium’s occupied seats.
In my thesis, I sought to answer the following questions: what does fandom in the National Women’s Soccer League (NWSL) look like? What role do organized supporters’ groups play? What differences exist between the style of fandom within the league and fandom in other sports or in men’s soccer? Are certain values prized by NWSL fans and teams?
Based on in-depth interviews, participant observation, and online data, I assert that through work on game days, at events beyond the stadium, and online, supporters’ groups and individual fans create a fan culture distinct from any other American professional sports league. I contextualize this argument in the history of women’s sports and American women’s soccer to assert that both the contested nature of women’s sports’ existence and the brevity of the NWSL’s existence enabled a highly politicized league, which is both demanded by the fans and supplied by the teams. I contribute empirical data on the function, organization, entry points, and motivations of these fans, as well as the messaging from teams’ front offices, data that has not been analyzed across the entire league before. Conceptually, I introduce new frameworks for understanding how fans value and narrate their connection to the NWSL.
My thesis provides a new depth of understanding for the NWSL fandom during a key turning point for women’s sports, which reflect broader societal trends around gender equality and power. Sports, as part of the dramatically powerful institution of popular entertainment—both financially and socially—must always be assessed with a critical eye, and this investigation of the fandom culture of the NWSL takes us a step closer to understanding one understudied venue in the sporting landscape.
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