The Optimal Design of Sporting Contests

The idea that Operational Research can be used to optimise the design of a sporting contest or tournament is a novel one. This paper considers a methodology for this purpose. We propose a number of tournament metrics that can be used to measure the success of a sporting contest or tournament, and describe how these metrics may be evaluated for a particular tournament design. Knowledge of these measures can then be used to compare competing designs, such as round robin, pure knockout and hybrids of these designs. We show for example how the design of the tournament influences the outcome uncertainty of the tournament and the number of unimportant matches within the tournament. In this way, where new designs are proposed, the implications of these designs may be explored using within a modelling paradigm. In football (soccer), the UEFA Champions League has adopted a number of designs over its fifty year history; the design of the tournament has been modified principally in response to the changing demands of national league football and television—the paper uses this particular tournament to illustrate the methodology.