The Economics of Panini World Cup football stickers 

The 2018 World Cup kicks off today, and as with all big football tournaments, the anticipation comes paired with the latest bout of Panini fever.

Not to be confused with their toasted sandwich namesake, a team of Frontier football enthusiasts took on the challenge of filling this year’s Panini World Cup sticker album.

Using a simulation model and our own sample of more than 5,000 stickers, we’ve gone further than your average collector, seeking to answer the questions on every Panini fan’s lips. What chance do I have of filling this year’s album? Are these stickers really randomly distributed? And how many friends should I team up with to increase my chances of completing the album?

Along the way, we’ve explored the lessons from economics and probability theory that might inform an optimal collection strategy, and have discovered first-hand how difficult completing an album can be. This bulletin charts our course. We hope you enjoy it.