A draft that rewards the worst teams gives the worst teams a reason to lose.
The draft is meant to restore competitive balance by giving weak clubs first choice of new talent. The incentive it creates near the end of a season is to be as weak as possible, which is why leagues have layered lotteries and weighting on top, each of which creates a further incentive to manage. It is a clean case of a rule producing the behaviour it was designed to prevent.
In practice
- A club rests its best players in March and calls it squad management.
- A grant scheme that funds the worst-performing schools rewards not improving before the assessment.
- Further reading
- Wikipedia
- Subject
- Sport & Performance
- Essay
- The best-measured contests there are