6 papers
The uncertainty of a tournament draw: Insights from the Champions League
László Csató, András Gyimesi, Dries Goossens +3
The group draw of major sports tournaments implies some uncertainty, with lucky teams often enjoying a substantial unfair advantage. First in the literature, we propose a technique…
Novel neighborhood structures for incomplete round robin sports tournaments
Karel Devriesere, David Van Bulck, Dries Goossens
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…
The incomplete Traveling Tournament Problem
Karel Devriesere, David Van Bulck, Dries Goossens
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 t…
On the non-uniformity of the 2026 FIFA World Cup draw
László Csató, Martin Becker, Karel Devriesere +1
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 compositio…
Evaluating Competitiveness in UEFA's New Champions League Format
Karel Devriesere, Dries Goossens, Frits Spieksma
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…
Ranking matters: Does the new format select the best teams for the knockout phase in the UEFA Champions League?
László Csató, Karel Devriesere, Dries Goossens +3
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…