Does A Sudden Death Liven Up The Game ? Rules, incentives, and strategy in football1

In an e¤ort to stimulate more attractive football, the international football association FIFA, has introduced several new rules over the past decades. One of the most recent rule change is the introduction of the ”sudden death” or ”golden goal” rule for games going into overtime. This paper analyses under which conditions, if any, the introduction of the sudden death rule improves the attractiveness of the football game. Our theoretical results indicate that the new rule will change the behavior of the teams, but not necessarily in the way intended. It may stimulate more o¤ensive play during extra times, but only if a team considers itself having a ”comparative advantage” in o¤ensive play vis-a-vis playing defensively. In other cases it will induce more defensive playing. Empirical evidence suggests that both may occur, but that the latter may be the more common situation and that the introduction of the sudden death rule has induced more defensive soccer, i.e. the opposite of the intention. Short Title : Sudden Death in Football Corresponding Author: Anurag N Banerjee Department of Economics University of Southampton Southampton UK Email : [email protected] JEL Codes: C72, L83