When Sports Rules Go Awry
When Sports Rules Go Awry Graham Kendalla,b, Liam J. A. Lentenc aUniversity of Nottingham Malaysia Campus, ASAP Research Group, Jalan Broga, 43500 Semenyih, Selangor Darul Ehsan, Malaysia bUniversity of Nottingham, ASAP Research Group, Nottingham, NG8 1BB, UK cDepartment of Economics and Finance, La Trobe University, VIC, 3086 Australia Abstract Mike Wright (Wright, M. OR analysis of sporting rules { A survey. Euro- pean Journal of Operational Research, 232(1):1-8, 2014 ) recently presented a survey of sporting rules from an Operational Research (OR) perspective. He surveyed 21 sports, which consider the rules of sports and tournaments and whether changes have led to unintended consequences. The paper con- cludes \Overall, it would seem that this is just a taster and there may be plenty more such studies to come". In this paper, we present one such study, by looking at specific examples where the rules of sports have led to unforeseen and/or unwanted conse- quences. It is hoped that through this, and other such studies, sports au- thorities will be far better equipped to make more informed decisions about changing the rules for a given sport/tournament. We believe that this is the first time that such a comprehensive review of sporting rules, which have led to unexpected consequences, has been pub- lished in the scientific literature. Keywords: Sport, Strategies, Incentives 1. Introduction Wright (2014) recently published an invited review which looks at sport- ing rules from the perspective of Operational Research (OR). He considered 21 sports, carrying out a post-hoc analysis of rule changes, finding, for ex- ample, that changes in the rules of volleyball did lead (as desired) to more predictable match lengths but also led to more defensive play, which was un- foreseen.
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