Do draws happen more in the Championship and does that make promotion and survival more likely?
A quick answer to a question I've received via glancing at some data I had at hand
Craig (https://twitter.com/Brad8926) today came to me with an interesting question:
It feels like there are more draws this season than usual.
If it stays that way throughout the season, what could it mean for the points required for top 2, top 6 and survival?
Let’s examine 1 first and specifically for the EFL Championship.
As things stand 180 matches have been played and 55 of them have been draws. Just under 1 in 3.
Is that a lot or not?
Share of games finishing in a draw 1992 onwards
To answer that we look at each season since 1992 after the first 180 Championship matches had bene played. Here’s how 2024-2025 compares:
The 55 of 2024-2025 is barely above the median (middle) number for all those seasons of 52, but it’s worth saying that the last time the number was higher was in 2015-16, nine seasons ago, so there’s good cause for feeling that there are a lot of draws this season.
The number of draws in the first 180 matches does a poor job of predicting the number of draws in the remaining 372 matches, however:
If they were good at making that prediction, then all the dots, which represent individual seasons since 1992, in the chart would be lined up perfectly along the diagonal (trend) line there. In statistical terms we say that we can explain 17% of the variation/change in the draw share for the last 372 matches using the draw share from the first 180 matches.
Do draws dull competition and make achievement easier?
Now for the second part of the question:
Does a lot of draws make it ‘cheaper’ pointswise to make top 2, 6 and survival? Logically that should be the case, as a game ending in a draw awards a total of two points to the teams involved in the game, whereas it’s three if either team wins.
Again we can try look at those 32 seasons and see how the share of draws in matches for the full season lined up compared to the points won by the team finishing 2nd, 6th and 21st.
In short: No. Using that statistical measure from before - looking at how much one set of numbers can explain about the variation in another set of numbers - it’s 16% for points won for the runner up, 11% for points won for the team in 6th and just 3% for the last surviving team’s points total in 21st.
And that’s despite the share of draws, unsurprisingly, being strongly linked to the total number of points won in seasons (81%).1
If we just take the points teams have won per game so far in 2024-2025 and extrapolate that to an entire season of 46 games, what is most striking is how un-striking this season’s distribution of points so far has been when compared against history and a ‘typical’ season after 15 matches:
The minimum number of points won in a season since 1992 is 1,479 (in 1995-1996) and the maximum is 1,533 (in 2006-2007). In 1995-1996 Derby County finished 2nd on 79 points - the joint-lowest on since 1992 - but Leicester City finished 6th on 71 points, just three points short of the median needed since 1992 and Portsmouth finished 21st on 52 points, more needed for survival than in all but two of the 32 seasons. The numbers for 2006-2007 (86, 75 and 49 points) also closely resemble the median numbers (88.5, 74, 49), despite ‘so many’ points being in play.