Is Soccer More Exciting Than a Nissan GT-R?

That's probably why the two got mixed together at one point in history, creating the wonderful thing we now call "motorsport." But that's not what we're here to tell you about, even though one very iconic piece of professional racing is part of the story: the Belgian Grand Prix track of Spa-Francorchamps. More on that later.

So, we've established there's no question whether men enjoy these two distractions, but there's still one aspect that hasn't found an answer: which one do they like better? Asking around would yield some results, but they would be purely subjective. We all think we know which we'd prefer, but despite our best intentions, we might be wrong. Time to settle this professionally.

Nissan - which is one of the main sponsors of UEFA Champions League, the most important club-level football competition in Europe - asked for the help of sports science experts at Loughborough University, found a few volunteers and began recording data.

The subjects who offered to help were fitted with state-of-the-art sensors that monitored their heart and breathing rate. While wearing the equipment, they were taken to the stadiums where matches of the final stages of the competition were played, and then drove around the beautiful Spa circuit at high speed inside a Nissan GT-R.

With the data obtained from these two activities, the researchers had enough to come up with a conclusion. It would appear being strapped tightly in a car that's doing over 150 mph as it darts from one corner to another is a little more exciting than watching 22 men kicking a ball on a pitch. Who would have thought?

But notice we said "a little." While that can be used sarcastically, it isn't the case here. The average heart rates of the volunteers were separated by just nine beats per minute (91 BMP for soccer, 100 BPM for the track experience), while the peak values showed a 12 BPM difference (124 versus 136).

Breathing rates values showed an even closer match - in fact, average breathing rate and average peak breathing rate were identical at 15 breaths per minute and 35, respectively. The only real difference came from the average breathing rate increase, which was four percent higher for those riding in the GT-R (140% and 144%).

It seemed logical for something you are actively part of (even though the volunteers were only passengers) to generate more excitement, and the data suggested the premise was true. The surprising part, however, is the small margin by which it does so.