By Maria Misbach
What if the structure of international soccer tournaments is influencing which teams advance before a tournament even begins?
In research forthcoming in the Journal of Quantitative Analysis in Sports, Michael A. Lapré, professor of operations management at Owen, and coauthor Julia G. Amato (BA’23), former Vanderbilt undergraduate research assistant, found that competitive imbalances existed in the UEFA European Championship (Euro) and the FIFA World Cup.
Their analysis covers Euro tournaments from 1980 through 2024 and reveals a surprising result: despite involving only European teams, the Euro shows competitive imbalance between groups that is just as large as in the World Cup.
“We often assume the Euro should be easier to balance because all of the teams come from the same continent,” said Lapré. “But the data show that the level of imbalance between groups is essentially the same as in the World Cup.”
How Group Draws Shape Tournament Outcomes
In both the Euro and the World Cup, teams first compete in a group stage before advancing to knockout rounds. Ideally, groups would be roughly equal in strength, ensuring each team faces comparable competition.
Using historical data and Elo ratings, a widely used system for measuring team strength, Lapré and Amato calculated the strength of every tournament group and the average strength of each team’s opponents.
Their findings show that the difficulty of a team’s group can meaningfully influence its chances of advancing.
For example, an increase in opponent strength equivalent to the difference between an average team and an average quarterfinalist can reduce the probability of reaching the quarterfinals by 9 to 12 percentage points, depending on the tournament format.
“That’s a substantial difference,” Lapré said. “Two teams of similar quality can have very different probabilities of advancing in the tournament depending on which group they draw.”
Why Imbalance Occurs
The research identifies two primary factors driving group imbalance in the Euro.
First, tournament hosts are often automatically seeded into the top tier of teams during the group draw, even when their competitive ranking is relatively low. That decision can create weaker groups.
Second, the ranking methods used by UEFA to seed teams have historically relied heavily on results from qualifying groups, which do not always reflect overall team strength. Importantly, UEFA rankings ignore all other matches including the matches played at prior Euro and World Cup tournaments.
The researchers find that Elo ratings outperform UEFA’s ranking system in predicting match outcomes.
Lessons for Future Tournaments
The findings come at a moment of growing interest in global soccer across North America. The paper will appear in a special issue of the Journal of Quantitative Analysis in Sports published ahead of the 2026 FIFA World Cup, which will be hosted by the United States, Canada, and Mexico.
Lapré says improving how teams are seeded could help create fairer and more exciting tournaments.
“Fans value uncertainty and competitive excitement,” he said. “Balanced groups increase the chances that the best teams advance and that more matches truly matter.”
About the Research
“The impact of imbalanced groups in UEFA Euro 1980–2024 and comparison with the FIFA World Cup,” by Michael A. Lapré and Julia G. Amato, was published online ahead of print in 2025 and will appear in a forthcoming issue of the Journal of Quantitative Analysis in Sports.
