Global Evidence for the Relevance of Irrelevant Events: International Soccer Games and Leader Approval

Abstract

Despite the intense debate over whether politically irrelevant events (e.g., football games) influence voters, existing literature predominantly focuses on the U.S. and a few developed countries, neglecting generalizability and heterogeneity across countries. Our study provides the first global evidence for the relevance of irrelevant events, analyzing the effects of international soccer games on leader approval in more than 100 countries (2008–2023). Leveraging “double” natural experiments, comprising as-if random assignments of interview dates and soccer results conditional on betting odds, we find that lucky victories enhanced public opinion about leaders by 7 percentage points, while unlucky losses lacked compensating effects. The analysis of causal mechanisms suggests that soccer games served as a benchmark of leader performance. Notably, these effects exhibit substantial cross-country variation, prompting us to consider contextual conditions across countries.