The expanded format of the Cricket World Cup means teams can lose three games — as England did in 2019 — and still win. Photo: Getty Images/Glyn Kirk
Take the best countries in the world. Bring them together for a few weeks of high-stakes sports. Congratulations: you've organized a World Cup.
At first glance, developing the structure of a World Cup couldn't be simpler. However, many sports fans have long realized that this is not true. Too often during the World Cup there are long periods of time when it seems as if nothing serious is happening at all.
The Rugby World Cup has been compelling on the field so far. But it is essentially a weekend-only tournament that lasts 51 days: England are now in the middle of a 19-day period during which they will play one game against Chile. The lengthy tournament is one of the reasons why the Rugby World Cup could feature 24 rather than 20 teams from 2027, according to Telegraph Sport. The Cricket World Cup, which is about to begin, has only 10 teams but still lasts 46 days; The format for 2027 is also changing, expanding to 14 sides.
The World Cup, of course, remains the gold standard. Last year's competition was a testament to the cutthroat format, with 32 teams all packed into 29 days, roughly the tournament's optimal length. This year's Women's World Cup confirmed the merits of this structure. However, the 2026 men's World Cup format will be revamped and replaced by an expanded and generally more complex 48-team format.
Revenue maximization is a common theme
The design of the World Cup is essentially an exercise in trade-offs. For each game to have maximum impact, the tournament must end in a direct playoff, explains sports economist Victor Matheson. But this format assumes that half of the teams will play only one game.
Knockout sports are what World Cups are all about: cases where there are no second chances. However, this can be a concern for administrators: teams from the most profitable markets may leave too early. While rugby is debating which 24-team model to adopt, it would be wise to adopt a format that maximizes knockout rugby — a short group stage of three games each, followed by matches for the last 16 teams — rather than a bloated group stage .
Across countless formats, maximizing revenue is a common feature of World Cups. It's just that the desire to earn as much as possible manifests itself differently in different games.
The expansion of football to 48 teams will lead to the tournament becoming more profitable. The additional 16 spots disproportionately benefit countries in North America and Asia, dramatically increasing the chances of qualifying for the United States, China and even eventually India.
In cricket, the desire to maximize revenue has taken the sport in a different direction. Cricket adopted a 16-team format in 2007; India were eliminated in the first round after three games, to the despair of broadcasters. About three-quarters of cricket's revenue comes from India; serving this market was more profitable in the short term than growth in other markets. This explains why the current format includes only 10 teams, guaranteeing nine matches for all sides.
More teams increase the risk of uncompetitive games
The larger format means that the starting stakes are too low and the competition consists of only three knockout games. Teams can lose three games (as England did in 2019) and still win the tournament. A side can also, as happened against Afghanistan in 2019, lose nine games out of nine, having played most of their matches having already been eliminated.
“You want every game to matter,” Matheson says. «Full round-robin is problematic because you can end up with quite a lot of meaningless games.» The next ODI Cricket World Cup's switch to 14 teams at least confirms the need for growth. It will also lead to a more dynamic group stage, with two groups of seven playing six games each before the top three teams advance to the Super Six.
Increasing the number of teams also comes at a cost: the risk of increasing the number of non-competitive games. However, while the occasional inconsistency remains, football suggests that having more teams at the World Cup enhances the depth of the game. Every time World Cup expansion has occurred, it has met with resistance: Stanley Rowse, FIFA president until 1974, usually argued that the standards of play in Africa and Asia were not good enough to allow both continents at least one guaranteed representative at the World Cup. football. World Championship.
As inspiring as World Cups can be, perhaps even more important is investing in new horizons between tournaments. Thanks to its global qualification structure, football has been doing this for decades. To improve the World Cup experience, cricket and rugby must give developing countries more opportunities to play the giants between World Cups.
Rugby faces a unique challenge in that players must now be given a minimum of five players. weekends between games. While this rule enhances the competition, it also protects its integrity. In 2015, four days after toppling South Africa, Japan had to face Scotland, who were playing their first game. Japan trailed 12-10 shortly after the break, but tired and missed five tries.
The biggest characteristic of a good World Cup is danger.
The integrity of the World Cup can be undermined in many ways. The lack of simultaneous group finals creates opportunities for team collusion, even if tacit — as in the notorious Gijon disgrace in 1982, when West Germany scored early against Austria and both teams seemed content to score 1-0, leading to both teams passed.
Football adopting a 48-team World Cup format now poses the risk of a repeat. In addition to the top two teams from each group of four teams, eight of the top 12 third-place teams will also advance to the last 32. As academics Alex Krumer and Mario Guajardo have shown, information asymmetry is when teams playing later know exactly what they need to do to qualify — will give parties who find themselves in groups who will later have an unfair advantage as they will know the bar they need to clear to qualify for third place.
Cricket's refusal to play group matches at the same time gives teams a similar advantage. The team that plays last in its group will know exactly the margin of victory it needs to advance if the teams are tied on points. This year, India will play their final group stage game against the Netherlands, the lowest-ranked team in the tournament. In the 2022 T20 World Cup, India played the final group game against Zimbabwe. In the 2021 T20 World Cup, India played the final group game against Namibia. You can detect a pattern here.
This speaks to a broader desire among sports administrators: to rid games of the uncertainty on which they are built, by ensuring that the biggest teams from the most lucrative markets play as much as possible. But the sport's glory lies in its brutal randomness: Germany, the 2014 World Cup champions, were eliminated after three games in 2018 and 2022. Sometimes administrators get the impression that they want to rid tournaments of the right teams taking the field at the wrong time. . They should have recognized the main feature of a good World Cup: danger.
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