In team sports, colours matter.
Because it’d be a much poorer contest if the competitors you watched couldn’t tell friends from foe, wouldn’t it? Or utterly hilarious, but that’s beside the point.
Above all, it’s a visual identity, shorthand for a fan’s allegiance and a way for other fans to instantly know which stadium you spend the majority of your Saturday slumped with your head in your hands inside.
But just what colour is the most successful? Well we’re about to bloody tell you.
Compiling data on the most successful teams in various sports over more than a century, this absurdly engrossing infographic from red-obsessed online shop Red Candy has the answer…
Sorry Manchester United, Boston Red Sox and other franchises kitted out in red, your colour isn’t the most dominant. Nor is black, which might look badass but performs fairly poor in the top world leagues of football, American football, ice hockey and baseball. Only in Rugby Union will a jet black kit statistically stand you a better chance of victory.
One glance at the pie charts below and you’ll see that clubs are most successful when playing in white. A whopping 64 per cent of winning teams have this colour in their strip, beating even blue and red. On the other side of things, the least successful colour was actually found to be gold, though this could be because only 0.4 per cent of the teams surveyed had Midas’s favourite shade predominantly featured on their strip.
So, if you really want to start taking things up a notch at your local five a-side league, you might want to have a rummage for that battered Roberto Carlos-adorned Galácticos Real Madrid shirt you don't wear anymore.
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