IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/gam/jgames/v13y2022i2p22-d763597.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

How Strong Are Soccer Teams? The “Host Paradox” and Other Counterintuitive Properties of FIFA’s Former Ranking System

Author

Listed:
  • Marek M. Kaminski

    (Department of Political Science and Institute for Mathematical Behavioral Sciences, University of California, Social Science Plaza, Irvine, CA 92697, USA)

Abstract

I investigate the paradoxes associated with the Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA) point-based ranking of national soccer teams. The ranking has been plagued with paradoxes that incentivize teams to avoid playing friendly matches, i.e., matches that are not part of any official FIFA tournament or preliminaries, and applying other counterintuitive strategies. The most spectacular paradox was the dramatic underrating of the hosts of major tournaments. For a long time, host teams, which were absent from preliminary matches, would play only friendly matches that awarded few points. Here, I present three models that estimate the magnitude of the resulting “host effect” at 14.2–16 positions. Such an estimate counteracts the intuition that a large investment in hosting a tournament should result in an improvement in the host team’s standing. However, as discussed here, a given host’s low ranking could decrease interest in the tournament, and likely result in a major loss of advertisement revenue.

Suggested Citation

  • Marek M. Kaminski, 2022. "How Strong Are Soccer Teams? The “Host Paradox” and Other Counterintuitive Properties of FIFA’s Former Ranking System," Games, MDPI, vol. 13(2), pages 1-22, March.
    • Handle: RePEc:gam:jgames:v:13:y:2022:i:2:p:22-:d:763597
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/2073-4336/13/2/22/pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/2073-4336/13/2/22/
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Ordeshook,Peter C., 1986. "Game Theory and Political Theory," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521315937, January.
    2. Jan Lasek & Zoltán Szlávik & Marek Gagolewski & Sandjai Bhulai, 2016. "How to improve a team's position in the FIFA ranking? A simulation study," Journal of Applied Statistics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 43(7), pages 1349-1368, July.
    3. Robert Houston & Dennis Wilson, 2002. "Income, leisure and proficiency: an economic study of football performance," Applied Economics Letters, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 9(14), pages 939-943.
    4. Robert Hoffmann & Lee Chew Ging & Bala Ramasamy, 2002. "The Socio-Economic Determinants of International Soccer Performance," Journal of Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 5(2), pages 253-272, November.
    5. Michael A. Leeds & Eva Marikova Leeds, 2009. "International Soccer Success and National Institutions," Journal of Sports Economics, , vol. 10(4), pages 369-390, August.
    6. Satterthwaite, Mark Allen, 1975. "Strategy-proofness and Arrow's conditions: Existence and correspondence theorems for voting procedures and social welfare functions," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 10(2), pages 187-217, April.
    7. Peter Macmillan & Ian Smith, 2007. "Explaining International Soccer Rankings," Journal of Sports Economics, , vol. 8(2), pages 202-213, May.
    8. Gibbard, Allan, 1973. "Manipulation of Voting Schemes: A General Result," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 41(4), pages 587-601, July.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. László Csató, 2024. "Club coefficients in the UEFA Champions League: Time for shift to an Elo-based formula," International Journal of Performance Analysis in Sport, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 24(2), pages 119-134, March.
    2. L'aszl'o Csat'o & L'aszl'o Marcell Kiss & Zsombor Sz'adoczki, 2023. "The allocation of FIFA World Cup slots based on the ranking of confederations," Papers 2310.19100, arXiv.org, revised May 2024.
    3. Alex Krumer & Juan D. Moreno-Ternero, 2023. "The Allocation of Additional Slots for the FIFA World Cup," Journal of Sports Economics, , vol. 24(7), pages 831-850, October.
    4. Lapré Michael A. & Palazzolo Elizabeth M., 2023. "The evolution of seeding systems and the impact of imbalanced groups in FIFA Men’s World Cup tournaments 1954–2022," Journal of Quantitative Analysis in Sports, De Gruyter, vol. 19(4), pages 317-332, December.
    5. L'aszl'o Csat'o, 2023. "Club coefficients in the UEFA Champions League: Time for shift to an Elo-based formula," Papers 2304.09078, arXiv.org, revised Oct 2023.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. repec:lic:licosd:26510 is not listed on IDEAS
    2. Wladimir Andreff & Madeleine Andreff, 2015. "Economic prediction of sport performances from the Beijing Olympics to the 2010 FIFA World Cup in South Africa: the notion of surprising sporting outcomes," Université Paris1 Panthéon-Sorbonne (Post-Print and Working Papers) halshs-01244495, HAL.
    3. Roberto Gásquez & Vicente Royuela, 2016. "The Determinants of International Football Success: A Panel Data Analysis of the Elo Rating," Social Science Quarterly, Southwestern Social Science Association, vol. 97(2), pages 125-141, June.
    4. Vicente Royuela & Roberto Gásquez, 2019. "On the Influence of Foreign Players on the Success of Football Clubs," Journal of Sports Economics, , vol. 20(5), pages 718-741, June.
    5. Roberto Gásquez & Vicente Royuela, 2014. "Is Football an Indicator of Development at the International Level?," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 117(3), pages 827-848, July.
    6. Rockerbie, Duane, 2014. "Canada at the Crossroads: Improving International Performance by Establishing a New Canadian Soccer League," MPRA Paper 60375, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    7. Zaytseva, I., 2018. "Social Capital as a Factor of Sport Achievements: The Case of National Football Teams," Journal of the New Economic Association, New Economic Association, vol. 37(1), pages 34-60.
    8. Pablo Castellanos García & Jesús A. Dopico Castro & José M. Sánchez Santos, 2007. "The economic geography of football success: empirical evidence from european cities," Rivista di Diritto ed Economia dello Sport, Centro di diritto e business dello Sport, vol. 3(2), pages 67-88, Settembre.
    9. Berlinschi, Ruxanda & Schokkaert, Jeroen & Swinnen, Johan, 2013. "When drains and gains coincide: Migration and international football performance," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 21(C), pages 1-14.
    10. Michael A. Leeds & Eva Marikova Leeds, 2009. "International Soccer Success and National Institutions," Journal of Sports Economics, , vol. 10(4), pages 369-390, August.
    11. Meir Kalech & Moshe Koppel & Abraham Diskin & Eli Rohn & Inbal Roshanski, 2020. "Formation of Parties and Coalitions in Multiple Referendums," Group Decision and Negotiation, Springer, vol. 29(4), pages 723-745, August.
    12. Csató, László, 2017. "European qualifiers to the 2018 FIFA World Cup can be manipulated," MPRA Paper 82652, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    13. Joshua Congdon-Hohman & Victor A. Matheson, 2013. "International women’s soccer and gender inequality: revisited," Chapters, in: Eva Marikova Leeds & Michael A. Leeds (ed.), Handbook on the Economics of Women in Sports, chapter 16, pages 345-364, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    14. Jan C. van Ours & Martin A. van Tuijl, 2011. "Country-Specific Goal-Scoring in the ‘Dying Seconds’ of International Football Matches," International Journal of Sport Finance, Fitness Information Technology, vol. 6(2), pages 138-154, May.
    15. Andrew Whitford, 2006. "Unitary, Divisional, And Matrix Forms As Political Governance Systems," Journal of Management & Governance, Springer;Accademia Italiana di Economia Aziendale (AIDEA), vol. 10(4), pages 435-454, November.
    16. Melanie Krause & Stefan Szymanski, 2019. "Convergence versus the middle-income trap: the case of global soccer," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 51(27), pages 2980-2999, June.
    17. Julia Bredtmann & Carsten J. Crede & Sebastian Otten, 2014. "The Effect of Gender Equality on International Soccer Performance," University of East Anglia Applied and Financial Economics Working Paper Series 065, School of Economics, University of East Anglia, Norwich, UK..
    18. Quesada, Antonio, 2005. "Selling a vote," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 21(1), pages 73-82, March.
    19. Plácido Rodríguez & Stefan Késenne & Ruud Koning (ed.), 2015. "The Economics of Competitive Sports," Books, Edward Elgar Publishing, number 15770.
    20. Wladimir Andreff & Madeleine Andreff, 2015. "Economic prediction of sport performances from the Beijing Olympics to the 2010 FIFA World Cup in South Africa: the notion of surprising sporting outcomes," Post-Print halshs-01244495, HAL.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:gam:jgames:v:13:y:2022:i:2:p:22-:d:763597. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: MDPI Indexing Manager (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.mdpi.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.