249. The Longest Long Shot

[0] It's a town most people hadn't heard of, and which many couldn't even pronounce.

[1] It's really the middle of nowhere.

[2] It's a nondescript, middle English town, population about that of Wichita, Kansas.

[3] Its claims to fame?

[4] King Richard III was buried there, otherwise fairly sparse.

[5] It was once England's post -industrial leather center, now the epicenter of the English potato chip industry.

[6] But in the last few months, it has become.

[7] But it's become home to the greatest underdog story of all time.

[8] We are talking, of course, about...

[9] Lester, this town has become the center of the sporting world.

[10] That's Lester, L -E -I -C -E -S -T -E -R, center of the sporting world, yes, but more specifically, the world of English football, or what we Americans call soccer.

[11] What this team have done, this innocuous little team, a team that were almost like, an extra in a movie or a third cousin at a bar mitzvah surprise to being invited and just happy to be in the background of the photographs.

[12] They've gone from the very bottom of the Premier League to the very top in the course of 12 months.

[13] Today on Freakonomics Radio, how did this happen?

[14] Watching them, I can only describe it as like watching the miracle on ice.

[15] Happen over 36 games again and again.

[16] I think it's the biggest betting upset we've ever seen in the UK.

[17] around the world.

[18] But even more important, what does the Leicester City miracle mean for the rest of us?

[19] If Leicester City can win the Premier League, you can do anything.

[20] He's quick.

[21] Jeffrey Slub.

[22] It's still him.

[23] It's a shore.

[24] From WNYC Studios, this is Freakonomics Radio, the podcast that explores the hidden side of everything.

[25] Here's your host, Stephen Dubner.

[26] So the last few years, I have been in the process of becoming a, serious -ish soccer fan, mostly because of this guy.

[27] I'm Solomon Dubner, and our relationship is...

[28] Father and son and co -podcast hosts on Footy for Two.

[29] That is true.

[30] We do do a podcast together that's about football.

[31] We should say that just about everything that I've learned about Footee in the last several years, you've taught me. Pretty much.

[32] Solomon is 15.

[33] On Footy for 2, that's F -O -O -T -Y, if you want to look it up, He talks match results and tactics and transfer news, and I pretty much just try to keep up.

[34] Mostly, I fail.

[35] So how would you describe your level of interest or obsession with the sport?

[36] This might sound crazy, but I say I'm top 500 to 1 ,000 Americans in football knowledge.

[37] Or at least for kids.

[38] I know a lot.

[39] It's pretty much my whole life, sadly.

[40] Now, let me ask you this.

[41] Why did or do you consider it your duty to school your first?

[42] father in football.

[43] Because you've taught me most things about life, so I think I should teach you something, right?

[44] I think that sounds fair.

[45] Last year, Solomon and I went to Europe during spring break to see as many football matches as we could in person.

[46] One of them, it turns out, featured Lester, more officially known as the Lester City Football Club, playing away against Tottenham Hotspur in North London.

[47] We saw the game before the Great Escape, thrilling four -three loss for Lester at the Whitehall Lane.

[48] That was the seven -go -filla that we did.

[49] saw it at White Heart Lane?

[50] That was Leicester.

[51] Yeah, and you know, Jamie Vardy scored then, of course.

[52] Then they won, I think, seven or eight out of their last nine games without losing one, and stayed up and finishing a 14th place with 41 points.

[53] And then they sacked Pearson, the racist sexology, hired the Tinkerman, Claudia Rainieri.

[54] Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.

[55] We're getting way ahead of the story here.

[56] We will get to all that, the great escape and what it means to stay up in the Premier League rather than getting demoted.

[57] Also, the sex orgy, the tinker man, everything.

[58] But first, a little background, especially if you are not familiar with how European soccer leagues work.

[59] Because the Leicester City story is not just a Cinderella story.

[60] It's a story about income inequality, about paradigm shifting.

[61] It's a story that'll probably show up in business school case studies for years to come by every David who's looking to take down, not just one Goliath, but a whole army of them.

[62] To really understand it for your listeners, Stephen, you have to understand the reality of English football.

[63] It's not like American sport.

[64] That's Roger Bennett.

[65] He and Michael Davies are co -hosts of Men in Blazers, a podcast and TV show.

[66] How to describe Men and Blazers?

[67] It is a very small beachhead for the growing, growing magnitude of Americans who are falling ever deeper under the space.

[68] Bell of the Premier League.

[69] Bennett grew up in Liverpool.

[70] The jewel of the nation.

[71] It is a lovely city.

[72] It's a Baltimore of England, Stephen.

[73] The team that Bennett supports is not the legendary Liverpool Football Club, which has won many trophies, but rather the somewhat less legendary Everton, an even older club that also plays in the city of Liverpool.

[74] Why support Everton?

[75] Birth, father, grandfather.

[76] It's in my blood.

[77] And I do believe.

[78] it's possibly the greatest way to bring up your children.

[79] It prepares them for the vicissitudes and ultimate misery of life.

[80] It really hardens them young.

[81] Anyway, as Bennett said, to understand the Leicester story, you need to understand that English football leagues don't work at all like the typical American sports league.

[82] Which is, bizarrely, one of the only things in America, which is actually communist in the way it's set up, in English sport, there's no draft, there's no salary cap, there's no revenue sharing, no parity.

[83] And the Premier League is every team for themselves.

[84] This is not a recent phenomenon.

[85] And that is Stefan Sheminski.

[86] I'm a professor of sport management at the University of Michigan.

[87] I'm actually an economist by background, and I've been writing about the economics and business of pro sports, really for the last 25 years or so.

[88] Sheminski's best -known book, co -authored with the journalist Simon Cooper, is called Socceromics.

[89] One of its central questions is how much does.

[90] Money matter when it comes to winning soccer games?

[91] Well, the simple answer is that money buys success and that the big clubs generate far more money than anyone else, and so they are able to buy the best new talent coming into the league and perpetuate that success.

[92] And this goes back 50 years or more in each of these leagues.

[93] Each of these leagues, meaning the leagues throughout Europe.

[94] In Spain, for instance, it's La Liga in Italy, Siri A. It's League Un in France, the Bundesliga in Germany, and in England, the Premier League, which is the most watched football league in the world.

[95] Each season, 20 clubs play 38 matches to determine a champion.

[96] Those 20 clubs are not constant, though, the way they are in American sports leagues.

[97] We'll get into that later.

[98] Each season, the league champion is simply the team that accumulates the most points over those 38 matches.

[99] You get three points for a win, one for a draw, none for a loss.

[100] There's no playoffs, no conferences or brackets, just one long march from August to May designed to flush out pretenders and flukes.

[101] And the big teams, Arsenal's, Manchester United, Manchester cities, they've owned the Premier League.

[102] Only five teams have won it in the previous 23 years.

[103] They just keep sharing it as if by right, by divine, God -giver.

[104] and right.

[105] And the difference for, particularly for American sports fans who aren't used to this system, the big difference to understand is that American leagues have instituted a series of restraints on the clubs, on the teams, in order to prevent this kind of dominance emerging.

[106] And you think of salary caps, you think of revenue sharing, and all the myriad of measures that restrain competition in American leagues, almost all of those measures are absent in Europe.

[107] There's no restraint which prevents the big clubs from becoming dominant and then perpetuating that dominance through the power of the checkbook.

[108] We're also used to in American team sports having a draft of the new round of amateur players, the new professional players, where the worst teams generally get the top picks.

[109] Nothing like that in these leagues, correct?

[110] There's no draft system.

[111] And indeed, the clubs now carry out a global.

[112] search for the best young players.

[113] And when we talk about young, we're often talking about eight -year -olds that they're looking for.

[114] And of course, the big clubs with the big financial resources can trawl everywhere on the planet.

[115] And the small and medium -sized clubs just don't have the resources to do that.

[116] How would you best describe the predominance of repeat champions in Europe versus, let's say, Major League Baseball?

[117] So I wrote a paper on this with a couple of co -authors, Luigi Busaki and Thomas of Valletti, a few years ago.

[118] And the way we put this was to talk about how many teams could possibly get into the top five places over a given period of time, the top five rankings, say, in win percentage for a season.

[119] And how many actually do?

[120] And if you look at something like Major League Baseball, over a period of 20, 30 years, maybe 60%, 70 % of all franchises end up getting into one of those top five slots, if you just take this arbitrary measure of win percentage in the regular season.

[121] And then you make the same comparison in Europe and look at how many teams could get into those top five places over a period of 20, 30 years and how many actually do.

[122] And the answer is it comes down to more like 10, 15%.

[123] And the difference in that is both in the.

[124] the numerator and in the denominator.

[125] So there are actually more teams get into those top places in the American leagues.

[126] But also, interestingly, there are many more teams that could get into those top places in the European leagues.

[127] And that's because of the system of promotion and relegation.

[128] There's a thing called relegation.

[129] Roger Bennett again.

[130] Which is like the moon door in Game of Thrones through which teams, the bottom three teams every year, just callously chucked down.

[131] It's as if in Major League Baseball, you took the worst teams in the Major League every year and just discarded them into AAA.

[132] We have no execution in the Erie.

[133] Life is more elegant here.

[134] Open the moon door.

[135] That's right.

[136] In relegation, the three bottom teams are flushed out of the league into a lower league.

[137] It's a concept that does not exist in American sports, so I have to say I wish it did.

[138] Maybe in American politics.

[139] as well.

[140] We can do Congress.

[141] I'm very hot.

[142] Oh, I'd love to do Congress.

[143] In any case, when you relegate the three worst clubs from the top football league, you have to replace them with the three best clubs from the lower league.

[144] This is called promotion.

[145] So, every season, three clubs from the top league are sent down, and three from the lower league are boosted up, which brings us back to Leicester City Football Club.

[146] It was founded in 1884, and since then, has gone back and forth between the first and second leagues of English football, with a brief descent just seven years ago into the third level league.

[147] There are many, many levels in English football and throughout Europe, from the rich and glamorous top leagues down through semi -pro and Sunday league amateurs.

[148] Freakonomics Radio, in fact, sponsors a Sunday league team called Duncow Football Club, which plays in Shrewsbury.

[149] Its league is roughly 20 levels below the Premier League.

[150] But good news, after finishing second in its league this season, Dun Cow has just been promoted.

[151] So only 19 more levels to go until the Premier League.

[152] Leicester City, meanwhile, two years ago finished atop the second division of English football and was therefore promoted to the Premier League.

[153] But toward the end of their first season back in the top league, it looked like they were bound for relegation again.

[154] As recently as April 17th, 2015, literally, Lester, the crepit little Lester, were bottom of the table, doomed.

[155] There were nine games to go.

[156] No one gets off the bottom of the table and manages to escape relegation.

[157] Somehow, they won seven of the last nine.

[158] They glenclosed it back to life.

[159] It was fantastic.

[160] This was the great escape that Solomon was talking about.

[161] And the match that we saw Lester lose in person to Spurs was the match just before they caught fire.

[162] So, by winning seven of their last nine matches, Lester stayed up in the Premier League for another season, but their troubles were hardly over.

[163] They had a manager then, a man called Nigel Pearson, who was a stern, authoritarian kind of despot, and he was willing to attack opposing players.

[164] While the game was going on, he tried to strangle one of the opposing players.

[165] He choked out an opposing player, yeah.

[166] It gets worse.

[167] Then in the offseason, Lester owned by a Thai entrepreneur, went on a team.

[168] tour of Thailand and terrible idea to take English footballers to Thailand.

[169] A video emerged of a couple of the footballers, one of whom was Nigel Pearson's son, engaged in a shameful trist with a gaggle of Thai prostitutes, which brought shame to the Thai owners, shame to the club.

[170] So even though Nigel Pearson led Lester to the great escape from relegation, Nigel Pearson fell.

[171] He couldn't get over this video, which was social.

[172] media catniff, and he was discarded, replaced with the anti -Nigel Pearson.

[173] In comes a new manager, the gentlemanly Italian Claudio Rainiery, known as the Tinker Man for constantly tinkering with lineups.

[174] Although very well -liked, Rainiery has a reputation.

[175] Reputation is a loser.

[176] In 29 years, he'd never won a title anywhere.

[177] The guy who'd lost everywhere, English journalist howled and said, this team are hopeless.

[178] They were hopeless now.

[179] They are doomed.

[180] They are doomed to relegation.

[181] The bookmakers said they're 5 ,000 to 1 to win the Premier League title.

[182] That's right.

[183] At the start of this season, British betting houses put Lester's chances of winning the league at 5 ,000 to 1, which seemed, if anything, perhaps too generous, my son Solomon again.

[184] What would you say if I told you that Cleveland Browns are going to win the Super Bowl next season?

[185] I would say that you've started smoking marijuana.

[186] Exactly.

[187] And that's what you would have said if I said Lester had won the league.

[188] And yet, Lester did win the league.

[189] It was like watching Mighty Ducks.

[190] It was like watching Major League with Charlie Sheen.

[191] It was like watching Karate Kid.

[192] But for real!

[193] A team chosen by no one, fancied by no one, respected by no one.

[194] Unbelievably, they've clinched the Premier League title.

[195] And even the players that I've interviewed can't quite explain how they did it.

[196] So how did they do it?

[197] It's a combination of many factors, surely.

[198] We should start with the players.

[199] That is part of Leicester's genius.

[200] They have scouted unbelievably well.

[201] They realized they didn't have the money.

[202] They were willing to look at certain statistics in a slight money -bore variation that the big teams just didn't value.

[203] Jamie Vardy, for instance, who wound up tied for second in the Premier League for goals scored.

[204] Four years ago, he was playing in the fifth tier of English football.

[205] Pretty much pub football.

[206] Sunday league.

[207] He was a factory worker.

[208] Another relatively obscure signing was Riyadh -Marz, who wound up fifth in the league in goals.

[209] A young Algerian with the face of a young Omar Sharif.

[210] A lot of big teams had looked at him, but all the big teams said he's too slight, he's a waif.

[211] He'll never survive the physicality of English football.

[212] But Marez did survive, as did the rest of Lester.

[213] They had a remarkably injury -free season, especially relative to other.

[214] clubs, the players also got on with one another quite well.

[215] The players themselves all point to this unique spirit and team chemistry that exists at the club.

[216] Plus, their underestimated manager, Claudio Ranieri, made some good decisions.

[217] What Ranieri did, he made their team incredibly quick and incredibly vertical.

[218] He played a high -velocity counter -attacking football in which they love to attack space.

[219] And as it happened, there was room at the top of the table this season in the Premier League.

[220] The five big teams, Arsenal, Manchester United, Manchester City, Chelsea, and Liverpool Football Club, they all blinked complacency at every level, managerial, recruitment, tactical.

[221] All of them have had seasons of flux, transition, disappointment.

[222] There's at least one more factor you can't dismiss.

[223] They also had luck.

[224] But there's no amount of luck or team chemistry or good scouting that is supposed to be able to produce the result that happened this year.

[225] Low -level clubs like Leicester City just do not win championships in top leagues.

[226] Here's Stefan Sheminski again.

[227] So I estimated that the wage budget for Leicester in the current season would have ranked them about 12th in the Premier League.

[228] And they were competing against teams like Manchester City whose budget would have been about four times as much as Leicester cities.

[229] And there's usually a pretty close.

[230] correlation between the rank of your budget within the league and your league position at the end of the season.

[231] So when is the last time that someone's so relatively low ranked in budget won this or any other top league?

[232] Well, in England, the last time probably is 1979 when Nottingham Forest won the English Football League Championship, which is what the Premier League title would now be called.

[233] And there was a very distinctive manager, a man named Brian Clough, who clearly had the ability to take relatively low -valued players and turn them into superstars.

[234] And that was the secret of his success.

[235] Brian Clough did it not only in Nottingham Forest in 79, but also with another small club, Derby County in 1974.

[236] So he did it twice in a period of five or six years.

[237] Now, would you say that that relationship between spending and success in American team sports is, whether necessarily less, but is significantly less strong because of the constraints, as you said, having to do with the way profit sharing happens, drafting happens, and so on.

[238] Oh, that's quite certainly the case.

[239] Now, there is depending on which league you look at.

[240] So in Major League Baseball, there's still quite a significant correlation between spending and success.

[241] But if you look at something like the NFL where really the difference in wage spending budget between the top team and the bottom team is negligible, well, there's almost no scope statistically.

[242] for money to make a difference.

[243] So if you actually removed all of those restraints in the NFL, you would get the same phenomenon.

[244] And maybe actually, if you think about it, that's what college football is.

[245] That's a system where there are no restraints on recruitment.

[246] And effectively, you see huge dominance by relatively big colleges in the different conferences.

[247] What do you think it says about the American system overall versus the European systems that we opt for sports leagues that have this built -in quest for parity?

[248] Well, I've always been very surprised by this.

[249] So to me, thinking as an economist, I think of this the difference between equality of opportunity and equality of outcomes.

[250] And when I think of Europeans in general, we tend to have strong systems of social services and safety nets, which ensure really, to the large extent, equality of outcomes within the European system.

[251] But traditionally we have a sense of limited equality of opportunity.

[252] We have class systems.

[253] We have big social gaps.

[254] And America, we always think of as being the reverse, where there's equality of opportunity, but very limited safety net.

[255] And it seems to me the sports story is completely the opposite.

[256] In Europe, we have this incredibly hyper -competitive capital, system where the devil take the hindmost, and we have a lot of financial failure in Europe.

[257] People, but that's also one thing that goes with this incredible amount of financial distress and failure.

[258] And yet, in America, there's these leagues which are essentially closed societies, which don't allow any competition, and then share out the resources equally in an enormous sort of socialist fashion amongst the top team.

[259] So it seems that, you know, the mental framework for sports is at odds with the mental framework about competition in society more broadly.

[260] Here, the quest for parity creates something that's pretty close to a cartel, which is that if you are in, you will almost be guaranteed to do quite well, which, again, doesn't seem to be much the American political system, but do you know anything about how we evolved into this seemingly un -American cartel -ish league system?

[261] Well, there are a number of steps that were very interesting in this.

[262] So one of the things is this absolute matter of faith, I think, in the United States, that parity is necessary for league success.

[263] And this is something that really emerged all the way back in the 1880s when the National League in baseball started talking about the need to maintain parity and give equal chances to the weaker teams.

[264] And yet the history of European soccer proves, I think, beyond any reasonable doubt, that parity is almost unimportant.

[265] I mean, so La Liga in Spain is currently, in many ways, the most successful, or certainly Barcelona and Real Madrid are two of the biggest clubs on the planet, and yet they have the most unequal league that you could imagine.

[266] And the Premier League, traditionally, has been for many years a very unequal competition, and yet it generates phenomenal revenue.

[267] So, for example, the combined soccer leagues of Europe now generate an annual revenue of about $25 billion, which is equal to the combined annual revenues of the NFL, major league baseball, and the NBA.

[268] So it's not that this is economically unsuccessful.

[269] And there are plenty of people step forward who want to put money into these leagues.

[270] Indeed, there have been many American owners investing in English soccer.

[271] Many of the Premier League teams are now owned by Americans.

[272] So this system works terribly well, it seems to me. I think one of the problems is, that people have brought into this idea of parity, and that's been a cover for the leagues in order to really to cartelize the leagues and to ensure that they are very profitable for their owners.

[273] Coming up on Freakonomics Radio, just how unlikely is a 5 ,000 -to -one bet?

[274] The risk of dying on a bicycle is about the same as the odds were of Lester winning the championship.

[275] We also hear from the man who every year bets on Lester to win the league, every year, except for this year.

[276] I foolishly moved to your country, and as a result of that, and not being in Britain in August, I somehow forgot to bet.

[277] And if you want to further your football knowledge but don't have a live -in 15 -year -old tutor like I do, you might want to check out an episode from our archives called Why America Doesn't Love Soccer Yet.

[278] You can find our entire archive on Freakonomics .com.

[279] You can also subscribe to this podcast on iTunes or wherever you get your podcasts.

[280] I rather famously used to always bet on them every year.

[281] That is John Micklethwaite.

[282] And I'm the editor -in -chief at Bloomberg, and I was formerly the editor -in -chief of The Economist.

[283] Which meant you lived in London?

[284] Which meant I lived in London.

[285] Micklethwaite grew up close to the city of Leicester, still has a house there.

[286] For many years, he had a tradition.

[287] Pretty much since the sort of mid -1990s, I used to go and bet every year, because the start of the soccer season was the same time as my birthday, which is August the 11th, and it became a sort of ritual.

[288] And I did that throughout my long career at the economist.

[289] All right.

[290] So you're saying that every single year for the last roughly 20 years, you've made a season beginning bet on Leicester to win whatever the league they were in, correct?

[291] Exactly.

[292] And for most of that period, for that 20 years, I looked back and checked.

[293] I won nothing in most years.

[294] And then this past year, when the British bedding houses established Lester as a 5 ,000 to one long shot for winning the Premier League?

[295] I foolishly moved to your country, and as a result of that, and not being in Britain in August, I somehow forgot to bet.

[296] And you typically bet how much?

[297] 20 pounds?

[298] 20 pounds would I bet recently.

[299] Okay.

[300] So let me ask you a question.

[301] If you had made your customary bet this season, you would have won roughly 100 ,000 pounds.

[302] Right, 100 ,000 pounds, which is a disappointing thing to have missed.

[303] Here's what I really want to know, John.

[304] Would you rather have won that money, which is not nothing, but it's not, you know, a new world?

[305] Or would you rather have this remarkable story of having never failed to place the bet except for the one year in which this bet would have paid off?

[306] Strangely, throughout this entire thing, although I've regretted not putting the money down, it's never made me not desperately want Lester to win.

[307] because if you've spent your life supporting this team, then you're intrinsically on that side of it.

[308] I think the other thing I should say, which is being honest, again, this doesn't reflect well on me, but at least for a couple of months of them being at the top, I miscalculated, I don't know why I did this, and I thought it was £20 against $10 ,000, which it would have been a lot of money, but not as much as $100 ,000.

[309] So I was sort of more kind of joking about it.

[310] It was only when I did the proper maths, or actually that one of my children did the proper mouse, that I began to realize the seriousness of what I missed.

[311] There's been quite a bit written about the astronomical payout that the bookies will have to make.

[312] But my assessment, I'm just curious to know if you've seen any date on this or just have any kind of intuition for it, is that there are relatively, relatively few payouts on Lester winning, even at that very, very high rate, that there are many, many, many more people who bet the big clubs.

[313] and that it's in the interest of the bookmakers to act as if they're very aggrieved but in fact it's a wonderful advertisement for them and they probably are doing just fine.

[314] You are a wonderfully shrewd man and I think you're absolutely correct in most numbers I've seen bookmakers tend to lose out heavily when there's a favourite which is heavily backed and where there's sort of odds of like two to three to one you see that a bit on racehorses that happens quite a lot the long shots there typically aren't many people who bet on them Lester to win the premiership.

[315] But you're right, in terms of the economics of gambling, I suspect actually for the bookmakers, this has been a very good thing because what has happened is it's excited everybody into the idea that long shots, you know, horses that are unfancyed are worth putting money on.

[316] And the honest truth is they're usually not.

[317] In the end, we're looking at probably an industry loss of around 20 million for Britain's bookmakers, which is a big payout in one day to be given out.

[318] And that is a British bookmaker, or at least a spokesman for one.

[319] John Hill is with Coral, one of the country's biggest betting shops.

[320] He's no relation to William Hill, which is the name of another big British bookmaker.

[321] We have just over 1 ,800 shops in the UK, but we also have a strong online business as well.

[322] And as a company, we take bets on football, horse racing.

[323] They're two of our core products.

[324] But we take bets on more or less everything, whether it's cricket, whether it's novelty betting.

[325] The British weather, that's one thing that the Great Britain, British public love to bet on the weather.

[326] Hill says that 114 coral customers bet on Leicester City to win the Premier League at odds of 1 ,000 to 1 or longer.

[327] I think it's the biggest betting upset we've ever seen in the UK and around the world.

[328] No other event really compares.

[329] Just looking at some of the previous sporting achievements, Ben Curtis, the American, he won the 2003 Open Championship.

[330] He was 300 to 1 that year.

[331] That's the American golfer, Ben Curtis, winning what Ben Curtis.

[332] The Brits call the Open Championship and what Americans call the British Open.

[333] We offer bets on horse racing.

[334] The biggest ever winner in horse racing in the UK is 250 to 1.

[335] So, you know, 5 ,000 to 1, that's far bigger than anything else which has been successful before in the world of sport.

[336] How does a bookmaker establish the betting odds?

[337] So at the start of the season, we'll price up every single team, say, in the Premier League.

[338] You'll have a favourite, which normally is the signed which won the Premier League the year before.

[339] also.

[340] Leicester, obviously, as I say, were, you know, close to being relegated.

[341] So they were rightfully one of the outsiders.

[342] That 5 ,000 to one, nobody would have said at the start of the season, well, that is the wrong price.

[343] Well, at some point, it's a bit arbitrary.

[344] That's Charlie Whelan.

[345] I teach public policy at Dartmouth College, and I'm the author of the naked books, naked economics, naked statistics, and most recently naked money.

[346] Wheelan warns that we shouldn't take an odds -makers numbers too literally.

[347] When bookmakers make odds for football games or soccer games or anything of that nature.

[348] It's really not a terribly scientific process.

[349] In contrast, if you go to Las Vegas, we know with precision what the likelihood is of spinning red or black when you're doing roulette because we know how many holes there are on the wheel and so on.

[350] We know with precision what the likelihood is of drawing 21 when you're playing blackjack.

[351] Those are things that are essentially scientific because we know the number of possibilities, and therefore using probability, we can estimate how frequently different combinations will come up.

[352] That's one way of the most scientific and precise way of assessing the odds of something.

[353] The second way we can come up with probabilities or odds is we can just look at lots and lots of outcomes.

[354] When it comes to professional sports, we don't have thousands and thousands of examples of Lester playing soccer games.

[355] We have, you know, 10 or 20 years of data.

[356] The players, by the way, are changing over that time period.

[357] So we have relatively few data points on which to make our assessment.

[358] And therefore, it's really much more of an opinion judgment as to the likelihood that they're going to win or lose a particular game.

[359] So it is a much less scientific process, is much less guided by past data.

[360] And therefore, we would expect these odds to be at best approximations of what is likely to happen.

[361] What else is so unlikely to happen?

[362] The risk of dying on a bicycle is about the same as the odds.

[363] were of Lester winning the championship.

[364] So what does it mean when a bookmaker sets the odds so high at 5 ,000 to 1?

[365] One way to think about it is if you played this tournament or this season over and over again for 5 ,000 years, you know, once a year for 5 ,000 years, on average you would expect Lester to win once.

[366] 5 ,000 to 1 essentially suggests they're never ever going to win.

[367] That they are never, ever going to win.

[368] And yet this year, they did win.

[369] And when something that's considered borderline impossible actually happens, what does that mean for the rest of us?

[370] What other sort of borderline impossible, potentially wonderful events might be lurking just around the corner?

[371] It's nice to think about, isn't it?

[372] Maybe that person you've been madly in love with for a few years, but who's never even looked your way, maybe that's all about to change.

[373] I wanted to know Roger Bennett's thoughts on this.

[374] Obviously, humans like stories generally.

[375] We like happy endings generally, but we particularly like those underdog and Cinderella stories.

[376] And here we really got one, and you've been following it and kind of breathing it in so intensely that I'm curious if it's changed the way you look at yourself, the world, your children, the future.

[377] Yeah, absolutely.

[378] We've got a lot of teachers from American classrooms showing us their whiteboards in the morning.

[379] And those whiteboards would say, if Leicester City can win the Premier League, you can do anything.

[380] So to me, this story does transcend just football.

[381] It definitely transcends English football.

[382] Within English football, I mean, the big takeaway, Lester have shattered a long -semented truth that money off the field directly correlates to Premier League success.

[383] That has gone.

[384] They showed that a football team can be beloved, can feel uplifting.

[385] I mean, if football is a fairly flash, it can be a fairly repugnant beast, fairly dark and professional sports in general when you get involved in it can be fairly cynical and negative angry world and this has been an unbelievably joyous uplifting accomplishment that will make every single supporter of every single team in any sport in the world believe that when their team's next season starts that why not us believe it could be us everyone in the world will feel that apart from Cleveland Brown's fans It makes me feel that everything in life is possible.

[386] I guess you could summate it as saying Lester City have officially spread false hope all around the globe.

[387] In the meantime, back to the present, back to reality.

[388] There's no doubt the bookmakers will make the odds much differently next year.

[389] I'd be surprised if they were more than 100 to 1.

[390] Yeah, we've already open betting for next season's Premier League title.

[391] In terms of Lester, they're now 25 to 1 for next season of Premier League title.

[392] I went back to John Micklethwaite from Bloomberg.

[393] Okay, John, next season, will you place your customary bet or, having failed to bet last year and seen lesser win the league, will you refrain from betting on the chance that it was your failure to bet that somehow helped them win the league?

[394] You're sad because you have already acquired the deep, deep pessimism and sense of personal responsibility that all football fans, including me, feel that you think that if you're sitting on the same sofa, At the same time, watching NBC Sports Network, that will definitely help Lester.

[395] The answer is I fully intend to go make the bet again.

[396] Because what happens if they won again, then you'd feel an idiot to have done it twice.

[397] I think they could actually challenge again next year.

[398] Solomon Dubner again.

[399] It's going to be a good season.

[400] What's your prediction right here right now for Lester's finished next year?

[401] Sixth.

[402] Really?

[403] Yeah.

[404] No, I'm going to say fourth.

[405] Fifth, fifth.

[406] Fifth is my final.

[407] I'm not going to make a prediction.

[408] It's my final prediction.

[409] How Lester does next season depends, of course, on many factors.

[410] Expectations will be higher, as will demands on their time and talent.

[411] They've now qualified to play for the Champions League trophy, which requires a whole other level of competitive intensity.

[412] And now that their players have proven themselves, richer clubs will try to snatch them up.

[413] Although, Lester will have more monetary ammunition than they're used to.

[414] They'll suddenly get a significant influx of cash as a result of this.

[415] That, again, is the sports economist, Stefan Sheminski.

[416] So the broadcast money in the Premier League is distributed partly on the basis of your success in the league.

[417] So you get a larger share of the broadcast revenue.

[418] As I understand it, there are two forms of or two streams of revenue sharing for football clubs in England.

[419] There's the domestic money, which is you get a larger share of that money if you're more successful on the pitch, but then the international money, which is growing, much faster than domestic TV rights money, is split more equally.

[420] Is that correct?

[421] Right.

[422] So strictly it's like this.

[423] The domestic money is divided into three parts.

[424] Half of it is divided on completely equal shares.

[425] Twenty -five percent of it is decided upon your rank in the league.

[426] And you get, it's divided into 20ths, and you get 20 -20th if you come first, 19 -20th if you come second, 18, 17 -20th, and so on, down to 1.

[427] And then finally, a quarter of it is divided on the basis of how many times you appear on television, because not all the games are shown on TV, and the more successful clubs tend to have their games televised more often, and therefore you get a larger share.

[428] You get an appearance fee every time you appear on TV.

[429] Then, as you say, the international broadcast revenue is divided on a strictly equal basis.

[430] Now, the big difference here is this.

[431] So this contract, this contract, this sharing rule was actually devised in 1992 when the Premier League was created.

[432] Back then, the overseas broadcast rights constituted, I know, one or two percent of the total broadcast revenue of the Premier League.

[433] So when they were in the negotiations, the big club said, no, we have to have a bigger share of the broadcast money, and that's how they negotiated this three -part deal.

[434] And then apparently what happened is the international money, because it was incident when nobody thought about it, and they just said, oh, well, let's just share that equally, and nobody argued.

[435] In the last 10 years, the international part is 40 % of the total broadcast revenue, and it could actually go over 50 % in years to come.

[436] So presumably, this is very good news for traditionally smaller or less rich teams, yes?

[437] Absolutely.

[438] So does this mean potentially at least, or theoretically at least, I should say, more Lester -like victories in the future?

[439] I think that's absolutely right.

[440] I think it's perfectly possible that we could see an increasing number of small teams being competitive in the championship.

[441] I'm curious, which team do you support, Stefan?

[442] So I support a third -tier English club called Scunthorpe United, which are hopeless.

[443] I'm sorry, I don't mean to laugh.

[444] Most people do.

[445] So you're saying your primary team that you support is not Premier League, not even the league below, but the third tier.

[446] So that'd be like me being a AA baseball team would be my first team, yes?

[447] Right.

[448] So it's like being a supporter of Toledo Mudhens or something worse than that, something even...

[449] But here's the thing.

[450] The Toledo Mudhens could not win the World Series in seven years' time.

[451] Leicester was a third -tier team like Scunthorpe United seven years ago.

[452] So I have hope that Scunthorpe United can do exactly what Leicester City have done.

[453] Oh, I can't wait until that happens only because it will be so much fun to phone you up and chat again about it.

[454] Well, you'd have to wait until I got sober, I think.

[455] Premier League champions, 2016, the amazing Lester City.

[456] Coming up next time on Freakonomics Radio, it is nearly summertime, which probably means that you and just about everybody you know, will soon be getting on an airplane, which means that you and just about everybody you know will rack up a lot of questions and even more complaints.

[457] Never underestimate the contempt people have for airlines.

[458] People hate carriers, and the airlines are out to either steal your money or get you killed or both.

[459] So as part of this, let me apologize in advance for sounding frustrated.

[460] A pilot for a major U .S. airline answers all my questions and yours.

[461] Is it true that pilots can see you through a camera that's in the bathroom?

[462] Have you ever come close to a crash?

[463] Is there anything that you have seen on a flight that you couldn't explain?

[464] Can the pilot really fly faster?

[465] And if so, why don't they fly faster normally as a normal matter of course?

[466] That's next time on Freakonomics Radio.

[467] Freakonomics Radio is produced by WNYC Studios and Dubner Productions.

[468] This episode was produced by Irva Gunja in the goal every week.

[469] Our staff also includes Jay Cowett and Merritt Jacob in the defensive backfield, in the midfield, Christopher Worth, Greg Rosalski, Cash Mahalovich playing a rover, and up front, Alison Hockenberry, and Caroline English.

[470] You can and should subscribe to this podcast on iTunes or wherever you get your podcasts, and come visit Freakonomics .com, where you can find our entire podcast archive, as well as a complete transcript of every episode, along with music credits and lots of extras.

[471] Thanks for listening.