I’m not looking for “soccer is the only sport to end in a tie” answers. I’m asking WHY, through the gameplay or tactics is soccer much more likely to end in tie compared to other professional sports?
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First of all, there are no tiebreaking rules for most matches (the exceptions being matches where someone has to win, like in knockout competitions or playoffs). In some other sports, most or all matches have tiebreakers to ensure that draws are impossible.
Secondly, it’s a low scoring sport. If teams only score around 0-3 goals per match, they’re far more likely to finish on the same score than in a sport where the teams typically get hundreds of points per match. There isn’t really a straightforward reason why it’s low scoring – there are lots of different rules that affect it. e.g. they would score more if the goalkeeper wasn’t allowed to handle the ball, or if the pitch was smaller, or if penalties were awarded in more situations.
Finally, most competitions are between evenly matched teams. In international competitions you sometimes get teams of wildly different quality playing each other – if, say, Germany play San Marino, you would expect Germany to win by several goals and a draw is very unlikely. But in most leagues the gap between the best and worst team isn’t that huge.
Having said that, there are sports where draws are more common. I think test cricket is slightly more likely to end in a draw, which happens if the end of the match is reached before all of the innings have been completed. At the higher levels of competition, a chess match is more likely than not to end in a draw, which can happen under several different circumstances, for example if both players have too few pieces left to checkmate or if they both agree to a draw because neither of them think they can win.
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