Nissan, the official global automotive sponsor of the UEFA Champions League, has revealed the scientific formula for excitement in soccer.
In partnership with sports science experts at Loughborough University in Leicestershire, England, the Nissan Excitement Index uses data gathered through physiological reactions of soccer fans watching UEFA Champions League matches. Based on these reactions, a formula called the Nissan Excitement Index has been developed.
Nissan and Loughborough University conducted live “excitement experiments” on pairs of soccer fans in the stands during six UEFA Champions League matches. Said fans were fitted with wearable technology to monitor and gather a combined index of data, including heart rate, breathing rate and electrodermal activity, to examine the physiological effect that excitement has on them.
Loughborough University combined this data with official match statistics from Opta in order to develop the formula at the heart of the Nissan Excitement Index.
The football-based formula measures all key elements that go into making an exciting football game, such as number of goals scored, time of goals and cards shown.
The scientific formula for an exciting football match, the Nissan Excitement Index, is:
Red = Home
Blue = Away
G = Goals scored
Y = Yellow cards
R = Red cards
S = Presence of star players
C = Stadium capacity
MA = Match attendance
TG = Time of goals
U = UEFA team ranking
H = Home team
A = Away team
The data showed participants’ average heart rate reached a peak of 122bpm during exciting moments in the match, which is comparable to the peak heart rates found in scientific studies of couples having sex. This comes as a separate Nissan survey showed fans admit to finding football more exciting than having sex or spending time with their partner. The highest peak heart rate monitored during a home team goal was 154bpm, when Paris Saint Germain scored against Chelsea.
The research also shows a spike of excitement when a yellow card was given to a player on the home team, compared with their opponents – in some cases provoking an increase in heart rate by more than 30bpm.
Commenting on the research, Dr Dale Esliger from Loughborough University, said: “Our team have spent the last few years developing world-leading scientific expertise in wearable/digital technologies applications in health and human performance. With Nissan, we have the opportunity to apply these innovative sensing or measurement in the realm of sports entertainment.
“Where we once subjectively judged how exciting a football match was using our ‘gut feeling,’ we can now use this methodology to objectively quantify the excitement of fans second by second, throughout an entire match. Combining all of this innovative sensor data allowed us to engineer the Nissan Excitement Index that can now be used to rank the top UEFA Champions League football matches. In the future, this type of research could also be extended into other areas of excitement, such as the physical responses which come from driving a thrilling supercar like the Nissan GT-R.” 
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