Interaction between Dutch soccer teams and fans: a mathematical analysis through cooperative game theory

Inspired by the first lustrum of the Club Positioning Matrix (CPM) for professional Dutch soccer teams, we model the interaction between soccer teams and their potential fans as a cooperative cost game based on the annual voluntary sponsorships of fans in order to validate their fan registration in a central database. We introduce a natural cost allocation to the soccer teams, based in a natural manner on the sponsorships of fans. The game theoretic approach is twofold. On the one hand, an appropriate cost game called “fan data cost game‿ is developed and on the other, it is shown that the former natural cost allocation agrees with the solution concept called “nucleolus‿ of the fan data cost game.