(Canonical version of this post is on “Sports in Ireland & Britain” on Technomancy)

I created some software to generate heatmaps from OpenStreetMap, here’s what OSM’s sport tag looks like for t̶h̶e̶ ̶C̶e̶l̶t̶i̶c̶ ̶I̶s̶l̶e̶s̶ Ireland & Britain

When you have checked out the code from Sourcehut (or Github), then run make build-deps to install requirements.

Then download the data:

$ make data-ireland-and-britain

Look at the spread. Initially I ran it withouth steps=..., and tried different values until I got something that looked nice.

$ make heatmap_key key=sport steps=0%,1.5%,4%,10%,22%,35%

Shows this:

Unsurprisingly, this shows urban populated areas. On average Britain, even rural areas, have a higher score than rural Ireland. It’s hard to know if that’s because of less mapping in Ireland, or less sporting facilities, which might show a difference in cultures.

Let’s see what’s popular:

$ make list_values key=sport
...
$ head list_values_sport_bboxALL.txt
  19967 tennis
  19558 soccer
   6823 bowls
   6447 golf
   5632 equestrian
   4134 cricket
   3164 basketball
   2317 rugby_union
   2080 multi
   1935 gaelic_games

Not terribly surprising.

Make an overview of the top 10:

$ make montage_top_10_sport_bboxALL_stamped.png key=sport

Unsurprinsgly sport=gaelic_games is popular in Ireland, and sport=cricket is popular in Britain. The default steps of 0%,25%,50%,75% can be useful, but as you can see with sport=golf,=tennis,=soccer, it’s not always useful.

Cricket in Britain

$ make percent key=sport value=cricket steps=0,0.1,2,6,8,9

“Cricket?! In Yorkshire!”o

Gaelic Games in Ireland with the same colours shows much more gaelic games facilities mapped in Ireland compared to cricket facilities. Hon the parish!

$ make percent key=sport value=gaelic_games steps=0,0.1,2,6,8,9

Rugby:

$ make percent key=sport value=rugby_union steps=0,0.5,2,3.5,5,10

Munster Rugby showing well:

Rugby League, with the same scales. Clearly it’s not as popular in OSM as rugby union:

$ make percent key=sport value=rugby_league steps=0,0.5,2,3.5,5,10

In OSM, there seems to be a high number of golf clubs mapped around Inverness, Scotland:

$ make percent key=sport value=golf steps=0,2,5,10,20,30

The English West Midlands seems to be dominating the horsey set:

$ make percent key=sport value=equestrian steps=0,3,15,40,50

The software to generate this can be found on Sourcehut or Github. If you create any interesting heatmaps email me!, or leave a comment below.