Evaluation and Discussion of Post-COVID Higher-rated Women’s Teams Winning More Often and Men’s Teams Less Often in World Championships

Abstract

A pre-COVID 2007-2019 data base was gathered to study all team sports that had international recognition, had an official rating system published by the governing federation and had a world championship (WC). The data base included 40 WCs for the 13 men’s team sports, 35 WCs for the 12 women’s team sports and a total of 3936 games in which the percentage of games won by each higher-rated team was tabulated. The higher-rated women’s teams won only 0.25% more than the men’s teams. Post-COVID, nine WCs were contested during 2021and 2022, along with one in 2023, using the same rating system as pre-COVID: four for men and five for women. In all four of the men’s WCs, the percentage of games won by the higher-rated team was lower post-COVID: curling (-6.1%), rugby 7s (-12.9%) and T20 cricket (-10.9% and -6.9%). However, the women’s higher-rated teams had higher percentages of games won in all five WCs post-COVID: curling (+7.3%), rugby 7s (+6.2%), T20 cricket (+7.0%), basketball (+5.0%) and rugby union (+0.4%). During the COVID-era restrictions, women’s social cohesiveness drove increased team cohesiveness creating increased cooperative learning and execution of tactical skills, whereas men emerged with less team cohesiveness. Keywords: sports predictions, gender differences, team cohesiveness, post-COVID changes