Sports – FiveThirtyEight RSS



Serena Williams’s Unimpeachable Serve

Serena Williams described her desire to be “perfect.” “I know perfect doesn’t exist,” she wrote in Vogue earlier this month, announcing her plans to leave professional tennis. “But whatever my perfect was, I never wanted to stop until I got it right.” Williams’s serve — the most elementally sound component of her game — might […]

Continue reading



What To Watch For In Each WNBA Semifinals Matchup

The WNBA semifinals are set, and it is hard to argue that anything less than the true cream of the league has risen to the top. Yes, the seventh-seeded New York Liberty gave the Chicago Sky a Game 1 scare, and the sixth-seeded Dallas Wings countered the Connecticut Sun in Game 2 of their series. […]

Continue reading



Does Spending Big Save Newly Promoted Premier League Teams From Relegation?

The English Football League Championship’s playoff final is often referred to as the “richest game in soccer” because of the substantial windfall its winner receives upon joining the Premier League. Through a mix of guaranteed shareholder profits and broadcast money, newly promoted teams stand to make hundreds of millions more per season in the Premier […]

Continue reading




The NFL Preseason Is Not Predictive — But It Can Often Seem That Way

This time last year, Cincinnati Bengals wideout Ja’Marr Chase was being labeled a ‘bust’. With just one catch — on an unremarkable bubble screen — and plenty of drops, Chase’s first preseason didn’t seem to bode well for his professional reunion with college quarterback Joe Burrow. All Chase went on to do was break rookie […]

Continue reading