By Paul Nicholson
May 9 – Champions League sponsor Nissan has developed an Excitement Index with Loughborough University that found that the average heart rate reached a peak 122 bpm during exciting moments in the match, which is comparable to the peak heart rates found in scientific studies of couples having sex.
And sometimes football is better than sex, even in France. “The highest peak heart rate monitored during a home team goal was 154bpm, when Paris Saint Germain scored against Chelsea,” said a Nissan press release.
The Nissan Excitement Index uses data gathered through physiological reactions of football fans watching UEFA Champions League matches. Fans were fitted with wearable technology to monitor and gather the data, including heart rate, breathing rate and electro-dermal activity. This data was then matched with game data to see what the peaks of physical ‘excitement’ came.
The researchers have even up with a formula that measures the elements that go into making an exciting football game including number of goals scored, time of goals and cards shown.
While goals obviously create the most excitement, he research also shows a spike of excitement when a yellow card was given to a player on the home team – in some cases leading to an increase in heart rate by more than 30bpm – compared with their opponents.
Dr Dale Esliger from Loughborough University said: “Where we once subjectively judged how exciting a football match was using our ‘gut feeling’ we can now use this methodology to objectively quantify the excitement of fans second by second throughout an entire match. Combining all of this innovative sensor data allowed us to engineer the Nissan Excitement Index that can now be used to rank the top UEFA Champions League football matches.
“Excitement is at the heart of everything we do at Nissan,” said Jean-Pierre Diernaz, Vice President for Marketing at Nissan Europe. “Our iconic GT-R super car and sponsorship of the exciting UEFA Champions League, are just two examples of how we strive to bring innovation and excitement to everyone.”
Nissan is further activating is Champions League sponsorship at the Milan final allowing fans to experience the thrill of driving the new 2017 Nissan GT-R through the streets of Milan, culminating at the iconic San Siro stadium, via a virtual reality experience in partnership with another official sponsor Sony PlayStation.
Contact the writer of this story at moc.l1714159504labto1714159504ofdlr1714159504owedi1714159504sni@n1714159504osloh1714159504cin.l1714159504uap1714159504