Weekly Roundup 07.14.2025

Welcome to another roundup of Sports Viz Sunday. This afternoon, I’ll be channel hopping between the Wimbledon Men’s Final and the cricket — both look set to be exciting prospects, especially the tennis.

I think many of us might have predicted a final between Alcaraz and Sinner, but there have been some brilliant matches and quite a few upsets along the way. I’m really looking forward to seeing these two players — undoubtedly the greatest right now — renew their rivalry. I think Alcaraz might just have the edge, but it’s shaping up to be an epic final. Unfortunately, more so than yesterday’s, where Iga Świątek dismantled Amanda Anisimova in straight sets without dropping a game — the famous double bagel. All credit to Świątek, who came into the tournament far from favourite, but has progressed smoothly and showed her dominance in what turned out to be a very one-sided final — a bit of a shame for those watching.

As for the cricket — it must be pretty rare for both sides to finish on the same number of runs after their first innings. So now we’ve essentially got a one-innings shootout to decide who takes a 2–1 lead in the England vs. India test series. I’m looking forward to seeing how England bat in the third innings today and whether they can bowl India out over the next couple of days.

We’re deep into Tour de France season, and things are heating up in the race for the yellow jersey. One of its most dedicated fans, our good friend Adam Green, has produced this fantastic sunburst-style chart. Not only does it depict the different winners over the years, but also their nationalities and the teams they represented.

What I love about this design is the way it highlights how team dominance can influence individual champions — particularly Team Sky’s control through the Wiggins and Froome years in the 2010s. Then it transitions into the Pogacar–Vingegaard rivalry in more recent seasons. There’s so much to explore here, and as always with Adam’s work — beautifully designed.

I’m honestly not sure I can do this next viz justice — or rather, let’s not call it a viz. It’s a multi-element interactive dashboard from Naresh Suglani, exploring football managers and their spending patterns — not just at their current clubs, but throughout their careers.

You can explore how much each manager has spent, compare trophies won, and dig into further stats that show how they’ve fared against other top spenders. There are individual player breakdowns and head-to-head comparisons. It’s an incredible resource with fantastic interactivity — smooth transitions, clean layout, and just a huge amount to explore.

As always with Naresh: brilliant design, great colour choices, and bold use of a dark background — not an easy feat, but it works brilliantly here.

Now, we don’t see many darts vizzes across the Sports Viz Sunday desk, so it’s great to have something a little different this week. In this LinkedIn design from Umar Hassan, he takes a look at the World Matchplay darts history.

What’s really interesting here is the range of metrics—most notably, prize money, which is on a clearly increasing trend. While you might argue that player performance has stayed relatively flat, with the highest averages not showing much change over time.

It’s definitely worth checking out the interactive version, as you can explore individual years. For example, looking back just 20 years to 2005, the winner’s prize money was £25,000. Compare that to last year’s £200,000 — a huge jump, reflecting the sport’s growing popularity. Great job, Umar!

Another brilliant community initiative worth highlighting is #BViz52. This week’s challenge features a dataset from the UEFA Women’s Euros — generously provided by our very own CJ Mayes. A great chance to dig into some international women’s football data and try your hand at a creative visualisation.

So — get involved if you can. It’s great to see this initiative gaining momentum.

This is a fantastic resource from Daniel Albano, who has developed a method to automatically detect line-breaking passes in football. Follow the LinkedIn link, and you’ll find a reference to the GitHub repo, which includes all the code you need to reproduce it if you want to track this in your own analysis.

Finally, it's great to see another “Back to Viz Basics” #B2VB week featuring sports data to explore the most expensive sports teams. As always with this community, there’s been a brilliant mix of designs. Some kept things simple — like a bar chart to highlight a single aspect — while others went into much more depth, using racing bars, bubbles, and rotating circles to bring the data to life in different ways.

I’ve included a few screenshots below of some of our favourites. There’s loads of inspiration to be found here, and it’s always fascinating to see the variety of ways people bring the same data to life.

That's it for this week. Stayed tuned, same time, same place for another glittering array of sports-related data viz next Sunday.

Simon & the #SportsVizSunday team