Game Theory in the WNBA Playoffs
https://defector.com/its-time-for-some-wnba-playoff-game-theory/
In sports, the idea of home-court advantage is not a new thought. Theoretically, teams do better at home due to a variety of factors, the most obvious being that the fans are on their side. Furthermore, playing at one’s home court mean less travel time, playing on a court that the players are used to, and more. In the WNBA playoffs this year, the format was changed from single-elimination games to best-of-three series. In the past, the higher seed always got the home-court advantage, but now that multiple games are needed for each round of the playoffs, the locations of each game has to be decided. the WNBA originally announced that “the planned change for the first-round series games will include a 2-1 format in which the higher seed will host Games 1 and 2 and the lower seed will host Game 3 if necessary.” While this makes sense in terms of travel time and guaranteed home games, it does away with the higher seed’s home court advantage in Game 3, which is arguably the most important game to win, as it would be sudden death/winner-takes-all.
This dilemma becomes a question of game theory. It depends on what each team deems as more important to their success: less travel time in between games, more home games, or playing at home during the most decisive game. Imagine if teams could choose the format of their playoff series; they could pick higher-higher-lower (where “higher” means played at the higher seed’s home court), higher-lower-higher, or lower-higher-higher. As the author of this article states, being able to choose would force each team to weigh the pros and cons of each option and figure out which factors are more important to them. It is also important to note that from the WNBA’s perspective, it might be more profitable for the playoffs to follow a higher-lower-higher format, as it would likely result in more games played per series. There are a lot of factors to come into play, so it will be interesting to see if the 2-1 format that the WNBA currently has will stand after this first year of series-style playoffs.