A numerical study of tournament structure and seeding policy for the soccer World Cup Finals

Scarf, PA; Yusof, MM

Abstract

Tournament outcome uncertainty depends on: the design of the tournament;
and the relative strengths of the competitors – the competitive
balance. A tournament design comprises the arrangement of the individual
matches, which we call the tournament structure, the seeding
policy and the progression rules. In this paper, we investigate the effect
of seeding policy for various tournament structures, while taking
account of competitive balance. Our methodology uses tournament
outcome uncertainty to consider the effect of seeding policy and other
design changes. The tournament outcome uncertainty is measured
using the tournament outcome characteristic which is the probability
Pq,R that a team in the top 100q pre-tournament rank percentile
progresses forward from round R, for all q and R.We use Monte Carlo
simulation to calculate the values of this metric. We find that, in
general, seeding favours stronger competitors, but that the degree
of favouritism varies with the type of seeding. Reseeding after each
round favours the strong to the greatest extent.The ideas in the paper
are illustrated using the soccer World Cup Finals tournament.

Citation

Scarf, P., & Yusof, M. (2010). A numerical study of tournament structure and seeding policy for the soccer World Cup Finals. Statistica Neerlandica, 65(1), 43-57. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9574.2010.00471.x

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Publication Date: Jan 1, 2010
• Deposit Date: Oct 5, 2011
• Journal: Statistica Neerlandica
• Print ISSN: 0039-0402
• Publisher: Wiley
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 65
• Issue: 1
• Pages: 43-57
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9574.2010.00471.x
• Publisher URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9574.2010.00471.x