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Misaligned incentives in sports: a mathematical analysis of the post-2024 UEFA Champions League qualification

Łászló Csató & S. Ilyin

IMA Journal of Management Mathematics2025https://doi.org/10.1093/imaman/dpaf016article
AJG 2
Weight
0.46

What the paper says

Accepted by: Phil Scarf The Union of European Football Associations (UEFA) declares that it is committed to respecting the fundamental values of sports. However, the qualification rules of the post-2024 UEFA Champions League are shown to be unfair: a game with misaligned incentives was narrowly avoided in the 2023/24 German Bundesliga. We develop a mathematical model to reveal how incentives for losing can be reduced or eliminated. Since UEFA repeatedly commits the same theoretical mistake in designing the qualification system of its competitions, governing bodies in sports are called to work more closely together with the scientific community.

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https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1093/imaman/dpaf016

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@article{łászló2025,
  title        = {{Misaligned incentives in sports: a mathematical analysis of the post-2024 UEFA Champions League qualification}},
  author       = {Łászló Csató & S. Ilyin},
  journal      = {IMA Journal of Management Mathematics},
  year         = {2025},
  doi          = {https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1093/imaman/dpaf016},
}

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Misaligned incentives in sports: a mathematical analysis of the post-2024 UEFA Champions League qualification

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Evidence weight

0.46

Balanced mode · F 0.40 / M 0.15 / V 0.05 / R 0.40

F · citation impact0.37 × 0.4 = 0.15
M · momentum0.60 × 0.15 = 0.09
V · venue signal0.50 × 0.05 = 0.03
R · text relevance †0.50 × 0.4 = 0.20

† Text relevance is estimated at 0.50 on the detail page — for your query’s actual relevance score, open this paper from a search result.