Karel Devriesere
The incomplete round robin sports tournament format, where each team plays the same number of games but faces only a subset of the other teams, is becoming increasingly popular in both youth and professional competitions. In contrast to…
Recently, UEFA changed the group stage of its international soccer competitions to an incomplete round robin tournament. Previously, teams were divided into groups, each playing a double round robin tournament with a resulting ranking…
Starting in the 2024/25 season, the Union of European Football Associations (UEFA) has fundamentally changed the format of its club competitions: the group stage has been replaced by a league phase played by 36 teams in an incomplete round…
We present a new problem called the incomplete Traveling Tournament problem, which introduces the well known Traveling Tournament Problem into the realm of incomplete round-robin tournaments. We focus on the case where teams can face each…
The group stage of a sports tournament is often made more appealing by introducing additional constraints in the group draw that promote an attractive and balanced group composition. For example, the number of intra-regional group matches…
According to recent empirical studies, the group draw of major sports tournaments can imply a high level of uncertainty, and some lucky teams enjoy an unfair advantage over the other teams. We propose a novel technique to quantify this draw…
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…