Is it unfair or discriminating that those who are strong compete against those who are weak? Lessons from the tournaments of ATP tennis game

2005 Wimbledon Tennis Open W200 £ 630,000 F140 £ 315,000 SF90 £ 157,500 QF50 £ 81,900 R1630 £ 44,100 R3215 £ 25,510 R647 £ 15,440 R1281 £ 9,450

Tournaments The players are effectively ranked on the basis of their relative performance and not on the absolute measure of performance, and the winners get promoted whereas the losers are passed over. Given the pay at each level, the system creates a tournament.

Favoring the Star Performers An apparent form of unfair discrimination in promotions when those who have done well early in their careers are favored at the later rounds. The highest-ranked players are given the easiest early rounds in the beginning of elimination match. The purpose of such bias for reflecting the unfair favoritism is to identify the ablest players. The effectiveness of elimination match is informational value brought through the previous contests rather than luck. –If the higher-ranked player beats the lower-ranked player, the winner of this round will be conform to the expectation and the ranking system. –If the higher-ranked player loses the first run, then the disadvantageous low-ranked player will be promoted to the following contests in order to verify the lucky effect while the high-ranked loser should also be shocked for striving for perfection in order to deter the advantage and quasi rents as a seeded player from the new entrants.

The inducement of effective incentive The effort and performance in tournaments are sensitive to the size and distribution of the prizes The higher prizes increased the higher level of effort and performance. In an empirical study about the LPGA scores, raising the total prize money by $100,000 (in 1984 dollars) lowered each player’s score on average by 1.1 strokes over 72- hole tournament. The effect occurred mostly in the later rounds near to the champion even though the players might likely be tired and so find maintaining the concentration more difficult. If the monetary gain to the first rather than the second is much greater than the gain to the second rather than the third, there is a greater marginal return to a player’s increasing effort on the competition.

Illustration return degree

Managerial Lessons A match with equal strength (50-to-50) –Winning by chance A match of wide gap in assumed ability –Winning by a great stretch The high incentive to induce participation –The advantage of being a winner –The enough inducement of striving for perfection Open a window for challengers –Junior players standing out of the qualification contests –Wild-card players Drill yourselves rather than claim for a fair game –The disadvantageous plays should make more efforts to defeat the privileged winners.

References Ehrenberg, Ronald G. and Michael L. Bognanno (1990), “Do Tournaments Have Incentive Effects?” Journal of Political Economy, 98, December, pp Meyer, Margaret (1991), “Learning from the Coarse Information: Biased Contests and Career Profiles,” Review of Economic Studies, 58, January, pp