Ali Thameem
Editor’s Note: An older version of this article was published on 8th February 2025.
About a hundred and thirty years ago, an Italian economist named Vilfred Pareto came up with the idea that, in many aspects of our lives, a small number of things account for the majority of the results.
This idea that a tiny percentage of effort results in a large output, or that the majority of rewards accrue to a small percentage of people, later became known as the Pareto Principle.
Once he opened the world’s eyes to this idea, people started seeing it everywhere; in business productivity; wealth distribution; real estate ownership; media consumption; and other aspects of society, including sports.
Pareto Principle in Sports
The Pareto Principle is more prevalent now than ever before, and it is seen in all competitive sports.
For example, through the 2023-2024 season in the NBA, just two franchises, the Boston Celtics and the Los Angeles Lakers, have won 49 champion trophies out of 78 seasons. This means that just about two-thirds of all NBA championships belong to just two teams. Like Pareto’s pea pods, a few teams account for the majority of the rewards.
The numbers are even more extreme in football. While 80 nations have competed in the World Cup since its inception, just three countries; Brazil, Germany, and Italy, have won 13 of the 23 World Cup tournaments.
The most accomplished winners in club football reap a similar proportion of glories; of the 70 seasons of the UEFA Champions League (European Cup) played until today, just four clubs, Real Madrid, AC Milan, Bayern Munich and Liverpool, have won nearly half (34) of all the Champions League titles.
Looking at the Champions League winners by country, although there are 55 member associations of UEFA, clubs from just four countries – Spain, Germany, Italy and England – have won 55 out of 71 UCL trophies. In other words, football clubs from just 7% of UEFA nations have won over two thirds (77%) of Champions League titles.
Why does this happen? Why do a few teams and few athletes enjoy the bulk of the rewards?
The harsh reality of zero-sum games
One of the reasons we find sports fascinating is its no-nonsense attitude towards merit. Assuming the rules of the game are fair, the outcome depends largely on how competent the players are; what effort they put into the game. The painful truth with matchups in sports is that, at the end of the day, there can only be one winner. Even if the contenders end up in a draw or a stalemate, there are knockout rounds and playoffs, point tables and tiebreakers, all set up to ensure one team or one player wins over the other.
As James Clear writes in Atomic Habits, you win the race by one second; you win the game by one goal or just one point. You win the league by fine margins. But if you remain one step ahead of the opponent, you win every time.
Clear illustrates this phenomenon by examples from certain sports that have one of the finest of margins between winners and losers, such as swimming. Imagine two swimmers competing in the Olympics. One of them might be 1/100th of a second faster than the other, but the winner gets all of the gold medals. You only need to be a little bit better than the competition to secure all of the reward.
This is one of the reasons why the Michael Phelps’s and Usain Bolts of the world reap the bulk of the gold medals every time.
From the initial advantageous position; with the first gold medal in hand and the first trophy in the cabinet, the winner begins the process of accumulating advantages that make it easier for them to win the next time around. With a better portfolio, the winning club gets to secure better sponsorship deals with high-paying brand-endorsements, transfer in stronger players and hire better coaches, etcetera.
What ultimately separates winners and the rest in sports is the fact that they are the ones who start with a slight edge over the rival, and then multiply their advantages every time they win again. Although the margin between the good and the great is narrow at first, winning just once improves your odds of winning the next time around.
As painful as it is for those left behind and, at times, as unjust as it seems, the truth is that, sports loses its purpose and meaning without the zero-sum affect. A winner will not be defined as a winner if not for the contrast in his or her performance against the so-called loser. This is a universal, inviolable principle in competitive sports.
The advantage of starting off a little bit better than the rest is not a little bit more reward, but the entire reward. The winner gets one and the rest gets zero. That is an inevitable consequence of playing zero-sum games, the rules of which every sport is based upon.
