Page 1 MAREK M. KAMINSKI Host paradox How strong are soccer teams? The ‘Host paradox’ and other counterintuitive properties of the FIFA’s ranking.* Marek M. Kaminski University of California, Irvine Abstract: FIFA's ranking of national soccer teams is plagued with paradoxes. One surprising paradox is a dramatic underrating of the hosts of main tournaments. The hosts, who are absent from the preliminaries, for a long time, play only friendlies that award few points. Three models estimate the magnitude of the resulting “Host Effect” at 14.1-16.7 positions. Such an estimate goes against the intuition that a large investment in hosting a tournament should result in improvement of the host team’s standing. Host’s low ranking decreases the interest in the tournament and may result in a major loss of advertisement revenue. Keywords: football, soccer, FIFA ranking, social choice paradoxes, World Cup. JEL Classification: Z29 D71 * Dept of Political Science and Mathematical Behavioral Science, University of California, 3151 Page 2 MAREK M. KAMINSKI Host paradox Social Science Plaza, Irvine, CA 92697-5100, U.S.A.; email:
[email protected]. Dennis Coates, Keith Dougherty, Jac Heckelman, Brian Kaiser, Barbara Kataneksza, Grzegorz Lissowski, Marcin Malawski, Kamal Sadiq and Andranik Tangian provided helpful comments. Center for the Study of Democracy provided financial support. 1. Introduction The 2018 soccer World Cup took place in Russia. There were calls for a boycott following Russian annexation of Crimea and the “hybrid war” in Donbass. Ultimately, some presidents of competing teams skipped the Cup. But perhaps the biggest worry for President Putin was the poor standing of the Russian team.