The importance of a match in a tournament

Scarf, PA; SHI, X

Abstract

A quantitative measure of “match importance” is useful in a number of decision problems, for example: as a metric in tournament design; for selecting matches for broadcasting; for scheduling matches in a tournament; and for assigning referees. To date measures of match importance used in such analyses have been relatively naïve. We discuss a general measure that considers the effect of a particular match on the end of tournament position, given the results of all other matches, some played, some predicted. We use logistic regression to predict matches and Monte Carlo simulation to compute the match importance measure, and apply these to soccer matches in the English Football Association Premier League.

Citation

Scarf, P., & SHI, X. (2008). The importance of a match in a tournament. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cor.2006.11.005

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Publication Date: Jan 1, 2008
• Deposit Date: Oct 6, 2011
• Journal: Computers & Operations Research
• Print ISSN: 03050548
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 35
• Issue: 7
• Pages: 2406-2418
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cor.2006.11.005
• Publisher URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cor.2006.11.005
• Additional Information: Additional Information : Sport, contest, outcome uncertainty, championship significance