On the importance of tournament design in sports management: Evidence from the UEFA Euro 2020 qualification

Kjetil Haugen and Alex Krumer

Chapter 3 in Innovation and Entrepreneurship in Sport Management, 2021, pp 22-35 from Edward Elgar Publishing

Abstract: A desire to have innovative types of tournaments to increase financial benefits by reducing the number of unimportant games is a very welcome initiative. However, failing to see potential pitfalls in tournament design may prove to be harmful to public interest with potential significant negative financial consequences. In this paper we discuss the design of the qualification for the UEFA Euro 2020 that is composed of the “usual†group stage, as well as an advancement option from the newly developed Nations League. We demonstrate several shortcomings that this structure may create, such as incentives to lose a single game as well as incentives to be the worst team in the group. In addition, it is possible to qualify for the final tournament by winning only two games in the play-offs and losing all the other 16 games in the “usual†group and in the Nations League. We also show that a top-seeded team in the final tournament is disadvantaged because it has to compete against two different teams that play at their home field. Finally, we discuss the scarcity of studies on tournament design in the sports management literature and call for its inclusion into the family of traditional topics in the field.

Keywords: Business and Management; Economics and Finance (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

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