Global Analysis of Birth Date Distributions and the Relative Age Effect in the 2023 Women's Football World Cup

Abstract

The growth in participation and professionalism within women's football has seen a significant rise, with a 24% increase in the number of women and girls playing organized football between 2019 and 2023, as reported by FIFA (2023). This expansion is not just a matter of numbers, but a change in the sports reality. The concept of the Relative Age Effect, studied since the mid-1980s (Barnsley et al., 1985), has been identified across various sports, highlighting a bias towards athletes born earlier in the selection year in diverse sports. Recent investigations into the RAE within women's football, particularly at elite levels, present mixed findings (Teoldo et al., 2023), suggesting that there is no RAE. These conflicting results underscore the complexity of the RAE phenomenon and its variable impact across different levels and contexts of women's football. The present exploration of RAE, specifically in the context of the Women's Football World Cup 2023, aim to examine the distribution of players' birth dates across continents and professional levels.