A sports analytics lab · Rodolfo López

Cooling Break

Sports questions people argue about, answered with public data and honest uncertainty labels. Every project ships with its methods, its sources, and its limits. Built on my breaks, published when done.

Projects
● Live · Final report
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Cooling Economy

Did the 2026 World Cup's mandatory hydration breaks change the football? And what were those two extra minutes of airtime worth to broadcasters? Every match tracked from opening day to the final, with a twice-daily automated pipeline.

104
Matches tracked
$351.6M
Est. break ad value (US)
No effect
On-pitch verdict
EN·ES
Bilingual
In progress · Aug 2026
Is pickleball dying?

America's fastest-growing sport, or a fad past its peak? Participation curves, court construction, and search interest, read the way an analyst reads any adoption curve.

Up next · Fall 2026
The price of play

Why does youth soccer cost so much in the US? Pay-to-play economics, what families actually spend here versus the rest of the world, and where the money goes.

How this lab works

Public data only, gathered and stored in reproducible pipelines. Every non-obvious number is labeled as a fact, an estimate, or an assumption, with a source log behind it. When the honest answer is "no effect" or "not enough data," that is the answer that gets published. Code and data are open on GitHub.