Incentives to lose revisited: The NHL and its tournament incentives

Abstract

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Tournament incentives and performance: Evidence from the WNBA

“…1 For example, see examinations of gender differences in competition using experiments (Mago & Razzolini, 2019) and sports (Emerson & Hill, 2014;Gneezy & Rustichini, 2004;Krumer et al, 2016;Wozniak, 2012).…”

“…In addition to evidence of tanking in NBA, researchers have found evidence of the same problem in other professional sports leagues where entering players are assigned by drafts. Fornwagner (2019) finds that National Hockey League (NHL) teams are more likely to lose games after elimination from playoffs. Borland et al (2009) and Chandrakumaran (2020) each examine whether tanking occurs in the Australian Football League (AFL).…”

The UEFA Champions League seeding is not strategy-proof since the 2015/16 season

“…play-offs) of the tournament (Taylor and Trogdon 2002;Balsdon et al 2007). Since managers are found to apply concrete tanking strategies (Fornwagner 2019), it would be important to adopt a policy that ensures integrity (Lenten 2016;Lenten et al 2018;Banchio and Munro 2020).…”

When neither team wants to win: A flaw of recent UEFA qualification rules

“…For instance, if a team is already eliminated from the playoff of a league, it can be profitable to decrease the effort in order to secure a better position in the draft for the next season. 3–6 In other cases, strategic manipulation can be applied to play against a preferred competitor in the later stage of a tournament. 7,8 Kendall and Lenten 9 offer the first comprehensive review of sports rules that have led to similar unexpected consequences.…”