Encouraging offensive play: A hidden benefit of incomplete round-robin tournaments

L\'aszl\'o Csat\'o and David Winkelmann

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Abstract: The Union of European Football Associations (UEFA) fundamentally reformed its club competitions from the 2024/25 season onward. The traditional group stage has been replaced by an incomplete round-robin league phase, in which all teams are ranked in a single table based on matches played against a subset of the other teams. Early evidence from the first two seasons of the UEFA Champions League in the new format indicates a marked decline in the proportion of drawn matches compared to the old format. Inspired by this observation, our paper examines how tournament design shapes the incentives to play offensively. We develop a simulation framework to compare the marginal gain from scoring a goal and loss from conceding a goal in terms of the probability of reaching critical ranking thresholds, using the initial scoreline of 0-0 as the reference point. We find robustly stronger incentives for offensive play in the new Champions League design. Roughly half of the increase is attributable to the modified thresholds, but the other half stems directly from replacing the group stage with an incomplete round-robin league. Our study is the first demonstration in the literature that the tournament format can materially affect team behaviour on the field.

Date: 2025-09, Revised 2026-10
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