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Happy Sunday, sports fans!
Well, with March approaching things certainly seems to be ramping up in the world of sport. The knockout stages of the Champions League have begun and with the exception of Liverpool and Real Madrid (arguably), all ties are delicately posed going into the second legs. The destination of English footballs first domestic trophy gets decided today with the Carabao cup final at Wembley between Manchester United and Newcastle United. A fascinating final this one, a decent case could be made for a new dynasty being established for whoever comes out victorious. Pre-season testing has been completed in Formula One with the first Grand Prix next week in Bahrain. There doesn't appear to be too much by way of change based on the notoriously unreliable testing times but there will be some teams very happy with how the testing went and others left scratching their heads as to how their winter of development hasn't translated to performance on the track. To cut a long paragraph short(er), there's plenty to look forward to as the daffodils spring up from their dormancy.
Onto this weeks round-up and Sports Viz Sunday regular Bo McCready provides a tableau take on an interesting piece from FiveThirtyEight looking at the average attendances from the top North American sports leagues. What I enjoyed about this piece is both the overall sense of which sports are best attended with NFL and MLB out in front on that score but also the distribution of the individual teams. I was surprised to see the soccer (MLS) comparatively low down. I had always assumed that the grounds were larger than they evidently are.
I love this exploration into the Ballon d'Or (recently better known as the Cristiano Ronaldo or Lionel Messi annual celebration) football award by Khalid Amribet. There are a number of beautiful touches to this long form design which goes into a huge amount of detail about the recent recipients since 2012. It's nice to see a new face in Karim Benzema collect the award in 2022 but there was something about those annual battles between the two GOATs of the game that made the outcome of the award intriguing each year. Great work, Khalid!
Joe Chelladurai shares this interesting bar chart depicting the current points for each of the premier league teams. I think it's the large text which overlaps the bars and carries beyond them in some instances that make this design very eye catching and larger than life.
I believe it was Rory Mcllroy that recently said golfs #1 world ranking was a hot potato being shared around between the likes of Jon Rahm, Scottie Scheffler and Mcllroy himself. Currently, by virtue of his victory at the Genesis Invitational, Rahm finds himself top of the pile and Kevin Flerlage has explored this "hot potato" with this beautifully designed Gantt style timeline of the number one players since 1985. Periods of domination from Greg Norman and Tiger Woods jump out but so do the battles between players vying for that top spot. Great work, as always, Kevin!
Much to dig into in this epic MLS related thread from Steve Fenn. Covering player ages, nationalities, most popular squad numbers and height and weight distribution there is much to learn from these various pieces. For example, Steve disproves the myth that players go to the MLS to grow old and retire gracefully with the majority of the players featuring well within their peak years of between 20 and 29.
Further inspiration we saw in the community this week
Ben Norland examines the incredible times achieved by the Formula One teams pit crews with this dot plot. Ben shows each teams variance to a typical pit stop since 2013 and provides great emphasis on the one clear winner, Red Bull. Best car? Best driver? Best pit crew? It's difficult to see anyone other than Max Verstappen standing on top of the world championship podium when this marathon 2023 season comes to an end in 23 races time.
Lorna Brown has updated her comprehensive Rugby League Super League stats dashboard for another year. Tons to explore here for each team and player cut across many different dimensions of the game. If you are a super league fan then this is well worth checking out and if you aren't it's still well worth checking out for all the amazing tableau functionality built into it!
Additional resources
Yawn. CJ Mayes is back again :-). This time with another exceptional tutorial covering how to create a pass network using a combination of Alteryx and Tableau. Even if you are a beginner in this space the style and flow of CJ's post ensure that it is easy to follow.
If you didn't get a chance to listen to Jared Flores' insightful walkthrough to extract and clean NHL data using Python and Tableau prep then look out for the recording that will hopefully follow on YouTube (the Tableau Prep TUG usually records and uploads its sessions)
I want to close off by saying a thoroughly well deserved congratulations to all the recently anointed Tableau Visionaries and especially to our very own CJ and Simon. You'll do well to meet two nicer people who continue to share their knowledge, experience and passion for Tableau and our beloved world of sport. I'm very lucky to have the opportunity to talk with them regularly, along with the equally fantastic Mo Wootten of course!
Until next time, have a great sporting week ahead!
Simon and the #sportsvizsunday team.