USING THE PAIRED COMPARISON METHOD IN IMPROVING SOCCER
RANKINGS: THE CASE OF THE ROMANIAN FIRST DIVISION

Călin Vegheş, Academy of Economic Studies in Bucharest, Romania,

ABSTRACT: The most common way to establish the final ranking in the football leagues across the
world is to have all participating teams playing each other, home and away, in a double roundrobin system. The team which obtains the highest number of points is declared champion while a
number of teams that have obtained the lowest number of points are relegated. Various criteria are
considered to differentiate the equal teams, such as superior overall goal difference, higher number
of goals scored during the competition, results in the direct games, and so on. Complementary ways
are considered to improve the final ranking, such as a double number of home-away games, playoffs and play-outs, supplementary games played home or away. The paper advances a new way to
determine the final ranking of a football leagues based on the paired comparison approach and
presents the results of testing this approach at the level of the Romanian First Division.

Keywords: paired comparison method, soccer ranking, sports marketing

JEL Codes: M31, L8