Valuing Australian football league draft picks

Area of Science:

• Sports Analytics
• Economics of Sports
• Performance Measurement

Background:

• Professional sporting leagues use competitive balance policies like salary caps and player drafts.
• The Australian Football League (AFL) uses a Draft Value Index (DVI) based on historic player compensation.
• The validity of the AFL's DVI has been questioned, prompting research into alternative models.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop an alternative Draft Value Index (DVI) for the AFL.
• To evaluate player draft pick value using on-field performance metrics instead of salary data.
• To assess the correlation between player performance and draft compensation.

Main Methods:

• Developed predictive models for on-field performance (e.g., games played) based on draft selection.
• Calculated new DVIs by retrofitting performance predictions to draft pick numbers.
• Compared the newly developed DVI with the existing AFL DVI.

Main Results:

• The new DVI exhibited an inverse monotonic function, similar to the AFL's DVI.
• The decline in value for the proposed DVI was less steep than the AFL's DVI.
• Player salaries did not consistently correlate strongly with on-field performance across draft positions.

Conclusions:

• The relationship between draft position and player performance is less varied than the relationship between draft position and player salary.
• The proposed performance-based DVI offers a potentially more accurate valuation of draft picks.
• The methodology can be adapted for player drafts in other sports leagues.