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How to avoid uncompetitive games? The importance of tie-breaking rules

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  • Csató, László

Abstract

If the final position of a team is already secured independently of the outcomes of the remaining games in a round-robin tournament, it might play with little enthusiasm. This is detrimental to attendance and can inspire collusion and match-fixing. We demonstrate that tie-breaking rules might affect the occurrence of such a situation. Its probability is quantified via simulations for the four groups of the 2022/23 UEFA Nations League A under two well-established tie-breaking rules, goal difference and head-to-head records. In these home-away round-robin contests with four teams and 12 matches, the competitiveness of the final four games can be promoted by giving priority to goal difference, which reduces the chance of a fixed position in the group ranking by at least two and usually five percentage points in the last round. Our findings, supported by sensitivity analysis in a theoretical model, provide important lessons on how to design ranking systems.

Suggested Citation

  • Csató, László, 2023. "How to avoid uncompetitive games? The importance of tie-breaking rules," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 307(3), pages 1260-1269.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:ejores:v:307:y:2023:i:3:p:1260-1269
    DOI: 10.1016/j.ejor.2022.11.015
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    Cited by:

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    2. Stuart Baumann & Carl Singleton, 2024. "They were robbed! Scoring by the middlemost to attenuate biased judging in boxing," Papers 2402.06594, arXiv.org.

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    OR in sports; Football; Ranking rules; Simulation; Tournament design;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • C44 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Econometric and Statistical Methods: Special Topics - - - Operations Research; Statistical Decision Theory
    • C63 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Mathematical Methods; Programming Models; Mathematical and Simulation Modeling - - - Computational Techniques
    • Z20 - Other Special Topics - - Sports Economics - - - General

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