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Making the Rules of Sports Fairer

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  • Brams, Steven J.
  • Ismail, Mehmet S.

Abstract

The rules of many sports are not fair—they do not ensure that equally skilled competitors have the same probability of winning. As an example, the penalty shootout in soccer, wherein a coin toss determines which team kicks first on all five penalty kicks, gives a substantial advantage to the first-kicking team, both in theory and practice. We show that a so-called Catch-Up Rule for determining the order of kicking would not only make the shootout fairer but also is essentially strategyproof. By contrast, the so-called Standard Rule now used for the tiebreaker in tennis is fair. We briefly consider several other sports, all of which involve scoring a sufficient number of points to win, and show how they could benefit from certain rule changes, which would be straightforward to implement.

Suggested Citation

  • Brams, Steven J. & Ismail, Mehmet S., 2016. "Making the Rules of Sports Fairer," MPRA Paper 69714, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    • Handle: RePEc:pra:mprapa:69714
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    1. Nejat Anbarcı & Ching-Jen Sun & M. Utku Ünver, 2015. "Designing Practical and Fair Sequential Team Contests," Boston College Working Papers in Economics 871, Boston College Department of Economics, revised 15 Apr 2021.
    2. Jose Apesteguia & Ignacio Palacios-Huerta, 2010. "Psychological Pressure in Competitive Environments: Evidence from a Randomized Natural Experiment," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 100(5), pages 2548-2564, December.
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    4. Che, Yeon-Koo & Hendershott, Terrence, 2008. "How to divide the possession of a football?," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 99(3), pages 561-565, June.
    5. Ignacio Palacios-Huerta, 2014. "Beautiful Game Theory: How Soccer Can Help Economics," Economics Books, Princeton University Press, edition 1, number 10260.
    6. Marc Pauly, 2014. "Can strategizing in round-robin subtournaments be avoided?," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 43(1), pages 29-46, June.
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    Cited by:

    1. Csató, László, 2019. "A note on the UEFA Euro 2020 qualifying play-offs," MPRA Paper 93006, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    2. Brams, Steven J. & Ismail, Mehmet S. & Kilgour, D. Marc & Stromquist, Walter, 2016. "Catch-Up: A Rule That Makes Service Sports More Competitive," MPRA Paper 75650, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    3. Csató, László, 2017. "European qualifiers to the 2018 FIFA World Cup can be manipulated," MPRA Paper 82652, University Library of Munich, Germany.

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Sports rules; fairness; strategyproofness; Markov process; soccer; tennis;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • C6 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Mathematical Methods; Programming Models; Mathematical and Simulation Modeling
    • C61 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Mathematical Methods; Programming Models; Mathematical and Simulation Modeling - - - Optimization Techniques; Programming Models; Dynamic Analysis
    • C7 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Game Theory and Bargaining Theory
    • D6 - Microeconomics - - Welfare Economics
    • D63 - Microeconomics - - Welfare Economics - - - Equity, Justice, Inequality, and Other Normative Criteria and Measurement

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