It’s a great thrill for Asian fans to watch European football games. You analyse their skills, you bond with your friends (more applicable in pre-pandemic times), you want to know the outcome of the match. Never mind the sleep deprivation. Never mind that most European football games are played in the wee hours of the Asian time zone, and thus you would go to work bleary-eyed on Monday.
But there is a positive correlation between high-profile football matches in Europe and traffic accidents in Singapore and Taiwan.
My study, published in the British Medical Journal in December 2020, analysed football matches and nearly 2 million cases of traffic accidents that occurred from 2012 to 2018. My co-authors and I gathered data from a Singapore taxi company as well as publicly available data of daily traffic accidents of all vehicle types in Taiwan.
After controlling for factors such as drivers’ age, driving experience and the weather, we found that days when highly-watched football games were aired also have higher than average traffic accidents in Singapore and Taiwan.
This means an increased rate of traffic accidents per year of about 371 accidents among Singapore taxi drivers and about 41,079 accidents among all vehicles in Taiwan.
Traffic accidents can lead to injuries and even loss of lives. On the economic aspect, insurance and paying damages come into play. We analysed that the increased rate of traffic accidents translates to about S$1.3 million (HK$7.57 million) for Singapore taxi drivers and about NT$478.8 million (HK$132.38 million) among drivers and insurers in Taiwan. The latter number is higher as the Taiwan data covered all vehicle types while the Singapore data only covered accidents involving taxis from a particular company.
The economic losses relating to insurance could be even higher. Singapore and Taiwan lie in GMT +8, the most populous time zone in the world with more than 1.7 billion people. It is likely that regions in this time zone may see more traffic accidents linked to sleep-deprived drivers on the mornings when popular football matches were aired.
A suggestion is for football agencies and associations to reschedule popular games from the usual Sunday nights (European time) to Friday or Saturday nights. In that case, they could still catch the European audience and Asian fans can get more rest after the match as well since it would be the weekends.
Some leagues have already expressed interest in rescheduling games. In 2019, Italian football club Juventus called for the league Serie A to consider scheduling matches at earlier timings to grow the Asian audience.
Football associations would have to balance the considerations of different stakeholders to determine the most optimal timings for the matches. At the individual level, though, something can be done. Don’t drive when you are sleep-deprived. That is one sure way to cut your losses, both on the safety front and the insurance front.