Tournament design: A review from an operational research perspective

TL;DR

This paper reviews tournament design literature through an operational research lens, focusing on efficacy, fairness, and attractiveness, and classifies existing work based on tournament components.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive classification of tournament design research from an operational research perspective, highlighting key criteria and future research directions.

Findings

Classified tournament design literature by format, seeding, draw, scheduling, and ranking.

Identified key criteria: efficacy, fairness, attractiveness.

Outlined open questions and promising future research directions.

Abstract

Every sport needs rules. Tournament design refers to the rules that determine how a tournament, a series of games between a number of competitors, is organized. This study aims to provide an overview of the tournament design literature from the perspective of operational research. Three important design criteria are discussed: efficacy, fairness, and attractiveness. Our survey classifies the papers discussing these properties according to the main components of tournament design: format, seeding, draw, scheduling, and ranking. We also outline several open questions and promising directions for future research.