Shifting the 'Goal Posts': Optimizing the Allocation of Competition Points for Sporting Contests

Niven Winchester

Journal of Quantitative Analysis in Sports, 2008, vol. 4, issue 4, 17

Abstract: Competition points are awarded in sports tournaments to determine which participants qualify for the playoffs or to identify a champion. We use competition points to measure strength in a prediction model and choose points to maximize prediction accuracy. This allows us to determine the allocation of competition points that most appropriately rewards strong teams. Our analysis focuses on Super Rugby, as the characteristics of this competition closely match our modelling assumptions. We find that the current allocation of competition points does not ensure that the strongest teams qualify for the playoffs and suggest an alternative. Our findings have implications for other competitions.

Keywords: tournament design; sports predictions; non-linear least squares (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2008
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (6)

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.2202/1559-0410.1119 (text/html)
For access to full text, subscription to the journal or payment for the individual article is required.

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:bpj:jqsprt:v:4:y:2008:i:4:n:1

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.degruyter.com/journal/key/jqas/html

DOI: 10.2202/1559-0410.1119

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Quantitative Analysis in Sports is currently edited by Mark Glickman

More articles in Journal of Quantitative Analysis in Sports from De Gruyter
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Peter Golla ().