English Premier League football teams are on course to pay over £100 million in salaries in the 2013/14 season to players unavailable for at least 30 days due to injury, according to analysis carried out by actuaries at Towers Watson.
But the company says that applying better analytical models to the injury risks associated with competing at the top level could offer a form of predictive “magic sponge” for clubs and insurers offering sports personal accident cover.
“Quantifying ‘lost salaries’ after the fact potentially offers useful benchmarks for insurers providing cover in this area, but offers few crumbs of comfort to the affected teams and little insight into what may happen in the future for either group,” said Paul Moorshead, a senior consultant at Towers Watson.
He added: “A more valuable measure is to attempt to identify those players or groups of players who are more likely to be susceptible to severe injuries.”
Towers Watson’s study of nine seasons of game data and injury records up to 2009/10, covering all 380 games per season, reveals some distinct trends in injuries. For example, teams delving into the summer transfer market may need to be wary of adding aging squad players, particularly those with a recent history of longer-term injuries. The model shows that players in the 29-31 age bracket who sit on the bench for 60% or more of matches carry a very high injury risk.
Once any player has had a severe injury, they are more susceptible to another one within two years of the original injury. The study shows that this is the principal factor in determining the likelihood of future injuries across the league.
Success comes with a particular price for teams who earn the right to play in European club competitions. A player who plays for a team that finished in the top seven places in the previous season is more likely to suffer an injury than a player from a lower team. This is exacerbated for teams finishing as champions and runners-up. What is more, players in the more successful clubs take longer to heal, with those from the top four being out of action for longer than the league average.
The fact that these teams’ squads are almost exclusively made up of international players – often from the four corners of the world – only makes matters worse from an injury perspective. Among players who take part in major international summer tournaments, there is a 30% increase in frequency of severe injuries in the following season.
Independent of the other causes of injuries, some clubs seem to have been consistently badly affected in recent seasons. These clubs include Manchester City, Spurs, Everton and Newcastle. Towers Watson estimates that player absences will cost Manchester City £16 million alone in an average season.
Paul Moorshead said: “Spending on player wages now accounts for around 70% of Premier League clubs’ combined income. Yet injury can, in the blink of an eye, still rob clubs of their prized assets for weeks and months on end, leaving them and their insurers to pick up the tab.”
“There is nothing of course that actuaries, or anyone else for that matter, can do about the inevitability of injuries. But, just as has occurred in other areas of commercial insurance, data and models can help understand what contributes to them and the underlying risks.”
“Managers concerned about injury levels, but without an unlimited budget to spend on expanding the size and depth of their squads, can still be proactive. A high average number of minutes played in a season is a key factor leading to higher injuries for a player and this is a risk that can be controlled somewhat by substitutions. Similarly, ensuring individual players don’t consistently warm the bench will avoid injuries. Lastly, offering players with poor historical injury experience ‘pay per play’ contracts will minimise risk to the club and enable such players to demonstrate their fitness and therefore continue their careers.”
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