Mitigating the risk of tanking in multi-stage tournaments

Fuente: arXiv
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1. Verfasser: Csató, László
Format: Preprint
Veröffentlicht: 2022
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author Csató, László
author_facet Csató, László
contents Multi-stage tournaments consisting of a round-robin group stage followed by a knockout phase are ubiquitous in sports. However, this format is incentive incompatible if at least two teams from a group advance to the knockout stage where the brackets are predetermined. A model is developed to quantify the risk of tanking in these contests. The suggested approach is applied to the 2022 FIFA World Cup to uncover how its design could have been improved by changing group labelling (a reform that has received no attention before) and the schedule of group matches. Scheduling is found to be a surprisingly weak intervention compared to previous results on the risk of collusion in a group. The probability of tanking, which is disturbingly high around 25\%, cannot be reduced by more than 3 percentage points via these policies. Tournament organisers need to consider more fundamental changes against tanking.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2211_16054
institution arXiv
publishDate 2022
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Mitigating the risk of tanking in multi-stage tournaments
Csató, László
Physics and Society
Applications
90-10, 90B90, 91B14
Multi-stage tournaments consisting of a round-robin group stage followed by a knockout phase are ubiquitous in sports. However, this format is incentive incompatible if at least two teams from a group advance to the knockout stage where the brackets are predetermined. A model is developed to quantify the risk of tanking in these contests. The suggested approach is applied to the 2022 FIFA World Cup to uncover how its design could have been improved by changing group labelling (a reform that has received no attention before) and the schedule of group matches. Scheduling is found to be a surprisingly weak intervention compared to previous results on the risk of collusion in a group. The probability of tanking, which is disturbingly high around 25\%, cannot be reduced by more than 3 percentage points via these policies. Tournament organisers need to consider more fundamental changes against tanking.
title Mitigating the risk of tanking in multi-stage tournaments
topic Physics and Society
Applications
90-10, 90B90, 91B14
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2211.16054