World Cup Follow-up (Part 1)

July 13, 2018

A few weeks ago I kicked off the World Cup with a survey of the top 10 ranked country’s  colors. At the time, it was impractical to acquire and measure actual jerseys for each World Cup team (32 total) so I limited the survey to top 10 teams and used publicly available data on flag colors under the assumption that jerseys would likely track closely with flags.

We’re now down to just two teams so, as promised, I’m back to share some measured data from team jerseys. There is, however, a small issue… Croatia jerseys are sold out everywhere! Probably because it is the first time Croatia has entered the World Cup finals. Luckily, I’ve got one on back-order and will follow-up with yet another update next week, after the big game.

In the meantime, let’s take a quick look at the measured data we do have for France.

France World Cup 2018 Jersey Colors plotted in CIE 1931

The plot above shows u’v’ coordinates for the three most interesting colors on France’s World Cup jersey: dark blue, light blue and the small pop of red from the back of the collar. As you can see in the plot above these colors actually fall just inside the BT.709 color gamut used for HDTV broadcast. They’re right on the edge though so, if you are watching in HD, you may want to look at having your TV calibrated before the big game for an optimal experience.

The other question that I had after the first post was whether or not the flag data would truly correlate to measured jerseys. In the chart below, I’ve plotted flag data from the original post against new measured data and it seems like my hypothesis held up. At least in the case of France, team colors were reasonably close to flag colors.

Looking forward to providing an update next week on Croatia’s bright red home jersey. In the meantime, may the best team win!