A probabilistic match classification model for sports tournaments

L\'aszl\'o Csat\'o and Andr\'as Gyimesi

Papers from arXiv.org

Abstract: Existing match classification models in the tournament design literature have two major limitations: a contestant is considered indifferent only if uncertain future results do never affect its prize, and competitive matches are not distinguished with respect to the incentives of the contestants. We propose a probabilistic framework to address both issues. For each match, our approach relies on simulating all other matches played simultaneously or later to compute the qualifying probabilities under the three main outcomes (win, draw, loss), which allows the classification of each match into six different categories. The suggested model is applied to the previous group stage and the new incomplete round-robin league, introduced in the 2024/25 season of UEFA club competitions. An incomplete round-robin tournament is found to contain fewer stakeless matches where both contestants are indifferent, and substantially more matches where both contestants should play offensively. However, the robustly higher proportion of potentially collusive matches can threaten with serious scandals.

Date: 2026-01, Revised 2026-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-spo
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://arxiv.org/pdf/2601.09673 Latest version (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:arx:papers:2601.09673

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Papers from arXiv.org
Bibliographic data for series maintained by arXiv administrators ().