A comprehensive review of data envelopment analysis (DEA). Approach in sports

Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) is a deterministic mathematical programming technique, evaluates the performance and benchmarking of decision-making units (DMUs) with several inputs and outputs. DEA, in addition to public and private sectors, finds application in the sports setting. As a result, a significant number of papers have been published that determine the athletic/economic/managerial efficiency by DEA in various games. In this paper, we present an extensive study on the application of various models of DEA in the following games: Baseball, Basketball, Cricket, Cycling, Football, Golf, Handball, Olympics, and Tennis. It is found that DEA identified the sources of inefficiency in different team and individual games by means of benchmarking analysis and provided possible directions for improvement.