When sports rules go awry

Mike Wright (Wright, M. OR analysis of sporting rules – A survey. European Journal of Operational Research, 232(1):1-8, 2014 ) recently presented a survey of sporting rules from an Operational Research (OR) perspective. He surveyed 21 sports, which consider the rules of sports and tournaments and whether changes have led to unintended consequences. The paper concludes “Overall, it would seem that this is just a taster and there may be plenty more such studies to come”. In this paper, we present one such study, by looking at specific examples where the rules of sports have led to unforeseen and/or unwanted consequences. It is hoped that through this, and other such studies, sports authorities will be far better equipped to make more informed decisions about changing the rules for a given sport/tournament. We believe that this is the first time that such a comprehensive review of sporting rules, which have led to unexpected consequences, has been published in the scientific literature.