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

Despite the intense debate over whether politically irrelevant events (e.g., football games) influence voter attitudes, the existing literature predominantly focuses on cases in the U.S. and a few developed countries, neglecting generalizability across other 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 from 2008 to 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 enhance public approval of national leaders by 7 percentage points, while unlucky losses lack compensating effects. The analysis of causal mechanisms suggests that soccer games serve as a benchmark for leader performance. Notably, these effects exhibit substantial cross-country variation, prompting us to consider contextual conditions across countries.