Abstract
Most research on competitive balance (CB) in North American sport leagues examines regular-season outcomes only, and does not analyze the potential impacts of postseason playoff tournaments. This article finds that playoffs do matter in a CB sense, in that they can substantially reconfigure regular-season outcomes. More importantly, they may reconfigure outcomes in a way that is not neutral with respect to payroll. The article finds, for example, that in the NHL over the 1994-2004 time period, team success in the playoffs was much less dependent on payroll than it was during the regular-season. The article also analyzes the differential impacts of the specific type of playoff tournament employed, and finds that the choice of playoff “pooling” structures directly impacts the probability of “upsets” occurring in the playoffs.
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