What Leicester City and BlackBerry Can Teach You About Outcome Bias.

Do you remember the BlackBerry Bold? The little phone with the QWERTY keyboard that made you feel like a Wall Street tycoon, even if you were just texting your mum? For a brief, glorious moment, BlackBerry was the device. Politicians, CEOs, and people who wore Bluetooth earpieces all swore by it. If you didn’t have a BlackBerry in the late 2000s, were you even alive?

BlackBerry was once the king of mobile. It was the smartphone before smartphones were cool. It had BBM before WhatsApp was a glint in Zuckerberg’s eye. At its peak, it owned over 40% of the U.S. smartphone market.

Then? Poof. Gone faster than your dignity at karaoke night.

So, what happened? Was it just bad luck? A missed trend? A rogue iPhone ambush in the night? The truth is, BlackBerry’s fall from grace isn’t just a tech tragedy—it’s a textbook example of outcome bias.

And to really drive the point home, we take a short detour… to football.

The Leicester City Analogy

Let’s talk about Leicester City, the ultimate fairy tale club — the team that pulled off the greatest heist in Premier League history. In 2015–16, they defied 5000-to-1 odds (yes, literal odds) and won the league, which was about as likely as your toaster winning “Australia’s Got Talent.”

Lowest wage bill in the top six. Jamie Vardy, a striker who was recently playing part-time in non-league. N’Golo Kanté, a one-man midfield octopus. Claudio Ranieri, a manager known more for being sacked than celebrated. And yet, they won. Miraculously.

So, what did Leicester do next? They doubled down. Kept the same squad. Gave Ranieri a new contract. Assumed lightning was a fan of sequels.

But lightning said, “Nah.” The following season, they were teetering above the relegation zone, and Ranieri got the boot just nine months after making history.

Why? Outcome bias.

Learn how Financial Modelling can help you make better-informed decisions based on data and analysis.

Outcome Bias: The League Table Never Lies?

Here’s the crux: outcome bias is the tendency to judge a decision based solely on its result rather than the quality of the decision-making process. If something works out well, we assume it was a smart move—even if it was just dumb luck wrapped in a Gucci suit.

There’s a saying in football: “The league table never lies.” Cute, but also, totally wrong. It assumes that once the season ends, all is fair in love, war, and football — the best rise, the worst fall. But that ignores the wild unpredictability of football. It’s not chess — it’s roulette in cleats.

The numbers nerds argue that football is a deeply random sport. Fewer scoring events mean luck plays a huge role. In basketball, skill eventually bulldozes randomness. In football? A deflection off someone’s butt can win the title.

Outcome bias blinded Leicester City’s leadership. They confused the miracle for a method.

And this isn’t just a football thing—it’s also a boardroom thing.

Don’t Trust the Scoreboard. Trust the Stats

Numbers nerds—whether in sport, tech, or business leadership—look beyond outcomes. They dig into the metrics that predict future performance, not just celebrate past results. These reveal how a team is performing under the hood.

In Leicester’s miracle season, their underlying numbers were… suspiciously average. Their total shot differential wasn’t elite. They relied on Vardy’s red-hot finishing streak and Mahrez’s one-man magic show. Kanté was a midfield Hoover, but the rest of the team overperformed in ways that simply couldn’t last.

That season, Vardy scored from impossible angles like he had cheat codes enabled, and Mahrez looked like a one-season version of Messi. Leicester’s success was glorious, emotional — and totally unsustainable.

Read: How a virtual CFO can transform your business.

Outcome Bias and Management Delusions

Leicester’s management, like many others, fell victim to outcome bias — the idea that a great outcome must mean great decisions were made. It’s comforting. It’s also dangerously delusional.

See, when a team fails, we dissect every inch of the corpse. But when it wins? Everyone high-fives and assumes they’re geniuses. No one asks if the success was built on shaky foundations or a little sprinkle of dumb luck.

In business, this is fatal. A great quarter doesn’t mean your product is amazing. Maybe your competitor tripped over their own feet. Maybe the market just got weird. Successful businesses (big or small) should think like professional number nerds — skeptical, unemotional, and borderline paranoid.

Blind optimism based on one good quarter? That’s outcome bias whispering sweet nothings into your strategy.

Read: The Traps of Avoiding Financial Modelling – A Lesson in Budgeting and Forecasting

Lessons for any business of any industry

The story of BlackBerry and Leicester City offers valuable lessons for businesses of any size, in any industry. Companies must resist the urge to bask in past glory. They need to ask: Were we really that good, or did the stars just align for a moment?

The rise and fall of BlackBerry, like Leicester’s once-in-a-century triumph, reminds us that success can be as misleading as failure. The trick is to look under the hood — whether it’s customer satisfaction, innovation metrics, or your own overinflated ego — and ask tough questions before the market (or the relegation zone) does it for you.

Adopt the number nerds’ mindset. Embrace skepticism. And for the love of everything holy, never assume Vardy’s going to score from 30 yards every week — or that your outdated phone with a tiny keyboard is still sexy in the age of Face ID and foldables.

Because in business, like football, the scoreboard can lie. But outcome bias? That one never misses a shot.

---

Financial Modelling can help you make better-informed decisions based on data and analysis. It supports you in evaluating the impact of different scenarios and options on your financial results. If you want to avoid being trapped by outcome bias, then you should be looking to implement a Financial Model in your business. Our team of CFOs can help design a Financial Model that is tailored to your unique circumstances, needs, and goals. Let’s have a coffee and discuss what suits you better.