They were Robbed! Scoring by the Middlemost to Attenuate Biased Judging in Boxing

Stuart Baumann and Carl Singleton

Journal of Sports Economics, 2025, vol. 26, issue 7, 771-782

Abstract: Boxing has long grappled with the problem of biased or “bad†judging. At its worst, this leads to “Robberies†, where boxers are widely seen as being denied rightful victories. Such incidents risk alienating fans and athletes. To address this problem, we propose a minimalist adjustment to the scoring system: the winner would be decided from the round-by-round scores of the judges, rather than relying on the judges’ overall bout scores. This approach, known as consensus scoring, is rooted in social choice theory and utilises majority rule alongside middlemost aggregation functions. We show that this scoring method creates a coordination problem for actively partisan judges and theoretically attenuates their influence on fight outcomes. Our analysis and simulations, using a stylised model of strategic judging behaviour, demonstrate the potential of consensus scoring to significantly decrease the likelihood of a single partisan judge from swaying the result of a closely contested bout.

Keywords: scoring rules; judgement bias; contests; pugilism; combat sports (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D91 L83 Z20 Z28 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
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Working Paper: They were robbed! Scoring by the middlemost to attenuate biased judging in boxing (2024)
Working Paper: They were robbed! Scoring by the middlemost to attenuate biased judging in boxing (2024)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:jospec:v:26:y:2025:i:7:p:771-782

DOI: 10.1177/15270025251348186

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