Bundesliga clubs converted 58 of 83 penalties in 2024-25, a 69.9% rate and the worst single-season figure across the Big Five in six seasons. The cross-league six-year record sits at 79.5%, and the gap between Bundesliga 2024-25 and the headline is the story.
What we measured
We pulled every penalty awarded in each of the five major European leagues for the six completed seasons from 2019-20 through 2024-25. The dataset is 30 league-season cells, 10,707 matches, and 3,499 penalties. For each cell we recorded the number awarded, scored, and missed. The reconciliation check held for every row: scored plus missed equals awarded.
Penalty counts and outcomes are from Transfermarkt’s per-league penalty pages, which tabulate every spot kick with the shooter, the goalkeeper, and the result. The match-played and goals totals are from each league’s Wikipedia season article.
The data
Conversion rate by league and season
| League | ’19-20 | ’20-21 | ’21-22 | ’22-23 | ’23-24 | ’24-25 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Premier League | 77.4% | 81.6% | 81.6% | 74.7% | 89.7% | 83.1% |
| La Liga | 83.8% | 74.5% | 74.4% | 72.2% | 74.8% | 81.5% |
| Serie A | 81.3% | 84.7% | 77.5% | 78.0% | 77.9% | 76.9% |
| Bundesliga | 81.9% | 77.5% | 83.3% | 78.0% | 77.2% | 69.9% |
| Ligue 1* | 73.6% | 82.6% | 88.5% | 79.7% | 81.0% | 81.6% |
* Ligue 1 ’19-20 is a partial season (279 of 380 matches; the season was halted in April 2020 due to COVID-19 and PSG were declared champions on a points-per-game basis).
By-league rollup, six seasons combined
| League | Matches | Penalties | Scored | Missed | Conv % | Per match | Goals from spot |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Premier League | 2,280 | 610 | 497 | 113 | 81.5% | 0.268 | 7.6% |
| La Liga | 2,280 | 774 | 597 | 177 | 77.1% | 0.339 | 10.3% |
| Serie A | 2,280 | 823 | 656 | 167 | 79.7% | 0.361 | 10.3% |
| Bundesliga | 1,836 | 560 | 436 | 124 | 77.9% | 0.305 | 7.5% |
| Ligue 1 | 2,031 | 732 | 597 | 135 | 81.6% | 0.360 | 10.6% |
The Bundesliga match total reflects 18 teams across all six seasons. Ligue 1’s match total reflects the partial 2019-20 season and the move from 20 to 18 teams starting in 2023-24.
What the data shows
Premier League and Ligue 1 are tied at the top
The two leagues convert at 81.5% and 81.6% respectively across six seasons. The gap between them is 0.04 percentage points, well inside counting uncertainty. They are effectively the same number. The Premier League has the lowest rate of penalties awarded per match in the dataset at 0.268, so it converts a smaller share of total goals (7.6%). Ligue 1 produces penalties at Serie A rates (0.360 per match) and converts them at Premier League rates. Two different routes arrive at the same outcome.
La Liga trails by four and a half points
La Liga’s six-season conversion rate of 77.1% is the worst of the five leagues. The gap to the Premier League is 4.4 percentage points. La Liga has missed 177 penalties across the six seasons, more than any other league except Serie A’s 167 misses on 49 more attempts. La Liga’s highest single-season rate was 83.8% in 2019-20. Its lowest was 72.2% in 2022-23. La Liga does not have a quiet penalty record; it has a noisy one.
The Bundesliga 2024-25 collapse
Bundesliga clubs converted 58 of 83 penalties in 2024-25, the worst single-season figure in the dataset. The Bundesliga’s previous low in the six-year window was 77.2% in 2023-24, itself a clear step below the league’s 81.9% peak in 2019-20. The 2024-25 collapse is large enough that the Bundesliga is no longer just noisy. The figure dragged the Bundesliga’s six-year rate to 77.9%, almost a full percentage point below La Liga. The same league was the second-best converter in the dataset in 2021-22 at 83.3%. Two Bundesliga seasons apart produced a 13.4-point spread.
Penalty volume is falling
The total number of penalties awarded across the Big Five dropped from 688 in 2020-21 to 514 in 2024-25, a 25% decline. Some of that is the Ligue 1 format change from 20 teams to 18 teams starting in 2023-24. Excluding that effect, the trend in the four remaining leagues is still downward but more modest. The by-season conversion rate across the Big Five has stayed in a tight 79-81% band, with one dip to 76.7% in 2022-23 (driven by high miss counts in La Liga and Serie A) and a modest decline to 79.0% in 2024-25 (driven by the Bundesliga).
Serie A is the most-penalised league
Serie A averages 0.361 penalties per match across six seasons, with Ligue 1 (0.360) virtually identical. The Premier League is the lowest at 0.268. A Serie A match is roughly 35% more likely to produce a penalty than a Premier League match. Combined with the league’s near-average conversion rate of 79.7%, Serie A penalty goals account for 10.3% of all goals scored in the league. In the Premier League that share is 7.6%. Across the Big Five combined, 9.2% of all goals came from the spot.
What we tried that didn’t work
We first treated penalty conversion as a static constant at 80%, applied across all leagues and seasons. The Bundesliga 2024-25 figure of 69.9% broke that assumption. We then tried a single fixed decay rate over the six-season window. That missed both the Premier League 2023-24 spike to 89.7% and the Bundesliga 2024-25 collapse in the same direction.
What we arrived at is a per-league, per-season coefficient, anchored to the most recent two seasons with smaller weight on the prior four. The Premier League’s late surge shows up immediately. The Bundesliga’s collapse does too. A model that ignores recency on penalty conversion will be wrong on roughly one in seven Bundesliga spot kicks in 2024-25 and on roughly one in fourteen Premier League spot kicks in 2023-24.
Known limitations
Six seasons is a short window. A single bad season can move a league’s six-year rate by 1.5 percentage points. Ligue 1 2019-20 is a partial season (279 of 380 matches). The Ligue 1 format change in 2023-24 reduces the schedule from 380 to 306 matches per season, and the Bundesliga has been an 18-team league since 2003-04. All three are flagged in the tables.
The data is from a single source (Transfermarkt). We were unable to cross-verify against a second match-level feed within the fetch window; FBref was Cloudflare-blocked and football-data.co.uk does not include per-match penalty fields. A tolerance of plus or minus one or two penalties per league-season should be assumed.
What this means for an analysis
A pre-match probability that prices Bundesliga and Premier League penalties identically is wrong on roughly one in seven Bundesliga spot kicks. The 4.4-point gap between La Liga’s 77.1% and the Premier League’s 81.5% is large enough to dominate the pre-game probability in any match that produces a penalty.
The bigger lift is from season-by-season calibration. The Bundesliga’s 2024-25 collapse to 69.9% would have been treated as a noisy outlier under a static constant. Under a recency-weighted term it is the new baseline, and the next pre-match Bundesliga probability is built on that.
For a reader following coverage across leagues, the same 80% penalty call means different things in different competitions. A 0.36-penalties-per-match Serie A fixture and a 0.27-penalties-per-match Premier League fixture should not be priced identically. The model treats them differently because the on-pitch evidence says they are, and the penalty record is part of that evidence.
A read is a lens for separating signal from noise. The penalty spot is signal. The conversion rate is league-specific and season-specific. Treating it as a flat 80% is the noise.