EuroLeague’s Final Four Is Less Fair: An economist’s perspective on why that makes it interesting

EuroLeague’s Final Four has been a defining event in European basketball since the modern era of the format began in 1988 (EuroLeague Basketball, 2024). Every year, at the end of the season, fans wait for one weekend that determines the season. Traditionally, the format has been simple and brutal: two semifinals, followed by the final that crowns the European champion. After months of regular-season games and playoff battles, the trophy is decided in a single game.

This is exactly what makes the Final Four controversial. It has often been argued that the EuroLeague should abandon the current format and move to a more traditional playoff system, in which the champion is determined through a series of games, as in the NBA. In that system, the stronger team would have more chances to prove its superiority. One bad shooting night, one injury, one referee decision, or one moment of panic would matter less.

The question is obvious: which format is better? The Final Four or the playoffs?

The answer depends on what we mean by “better.” If the goal is to identify the best team as accurately as possible, then a playoff series is probably the way to go. If, however, the goal is to create suspense, emotion, and drama for the fans, then the Final Four is undoubtedly more interesting. The Final Four is less fair — and that is precisely why it is more compelling. Dr. Anastasios Dosis, professor of economics at ESSEC and co-holder of the ESSEC Sports Chair, explains why, using lessons from economics.

The Case Against EuroLeague’s Final Four

The criticism is not irrational. In fact, some of the most respected coaches in European basketball have openly argued against it. Dimitris Itoudis, for example, has repeatedly argued that the EuroLeague should move toward a playoff system. After CSKA Moscow’s Final Four defeat in 2015, he said that the format gives “extra chances to underdogs” and called it “an unfair system” (CSKA Moscow, 2015). A decade later, he again made the same point, saying that he favors a playoff system because “basketball equals playoffs” (Sports Rabbi, 2025).

Giorgos Bartzokas, the head coach of Olympiacos BC, expressed a similar frustration after Olympiacos qualified for the 2026 Final Four. He argued that Olympiacos had been, objectively based on the numbers, the best team during the season, but that under the Final Four format the best team still has to play the whole season in one single game. (Eurohoops, 2026a). Panagiotis Angelopoulos, owner of the Olympiacos BC, however, added the important qualification that the Final Four may not be the fairest system, but it has a certain magic (Olympiacos BC, 2026).

In a sense, they are all right.

Basketball is not football. In football, a weaker team can defend fiercely for ninety minutes, score from a corner or another set piece, and win the game against a much stronger opponent. In basketball, there are many more possessions, many more scoring opportunities, and therefore more chances for the better team to demonstrate its superiority. Randomness still exists, of course, but to a lesser extent than in low-scoring sports. As a consequence, randomness becomes even less important over a five-game or seven-game series: the better team has more time to adjust, more time to recover from a bad night, and more time to impose its quality.

This is why playoff series are fairer. They reduce noise. They protect the stronger team. They make it less likely that an underdog wins because of one extraordinary night.

This is also their drawback. By making the outcome fairer, playoff series also make it less uncertain – which can also mean less exciting.

Why Sports Need Uncertainty

We are drawn to professional sports not only because of the players’ athletic prowess – but also because of the emotions involved. Fans watch because they want fear, hope, tension, anger, relief, collapse, revenge, and surprise. The greater the suspense, the more powerful the event becomes.

This is one of the differences between the sports industry and most other industries. In most industries, firms may benefit from crushing their rivals; in sports, however, a team needs strong opponents. A league in which one team crushes everyone may be good for that team in the short run, but it is bad for the product in the long run. Rivalry is part of the product. Competition is part of the entertainment.

This is why leagues often care about competitive balance. Salary caps, Financial Fair Play-type rules, revenue-sharing systems, and other regulations are not just moral or administrative choices. They are ways of protecting the uncertainty that makes sports attractive.

Economists call this the uncertainty-of-outcome hypothesis. The idea is simple: fans are more absorbed when the result of a game is uncertain. If the home team has no chance, the game is painful. If the home team is certain to win, the game becomes boring. The most interesting games are somewhere in between.

In pure theory, fan interest should peak when both teams have a 50–50 chance of winning. Empirically, however, the reality is more complicated. Fans usually like un-certainty, but they also like hope. They often prefer their team to be slightly favored, not completely equal and certainly not hopeless. Some empirical studies have found that attendance may peak when the home team’s probability of winning is around 0.60–0.66 rather than exactly 0.50 (Knowles, Sherony, and Haupert, 1992; Rascher and Solmes, 2007).

Figure 1: Uncertainty of outcome and fan interest. Pure theory predicts maximum interest at complete balance. Empirically, fans often prefer uncertainty combined with a realistic chance that their team will win.

Figure 1 captures the basic intuition. A certain defeat is painful. A certain victory is boring. What fans want is not pure randomness, but meaningful uncertainty. They want to believe their team can win, while also knowing that winning is not guaranteed.

This is exactly the emotional territory of the Final Four.

A playoff series is a mechanism for reducing uncertainty; the Final Four is a mechanism for intensifying it. In a series, the stronger team can absorb mistakes. In a Final Four, one bad quarter can destroy an entire season. A team can dominate the regular season, survive the playoffs, arrive as the favorite, and still lose everything in forty minutes.

For coaches and players, this is cruel. For fans, it is gold.

That’s why the debate about the Final Four cannot be reduced to fairness. Of course, the format is less fair – that’s the point. It creates a situation in which the favorite is never fully safe and the underdog is never completely dead. It gives the weaker team a real fighting chance, but they still have to “deserve” their win and perform at their best.

The history of recent EuroLeague seasons makes this even more powerful. In the completed seasons since the league adopted its modern round-robin regular-season format in 2016–17, no first-place regular-season team has won the title. This so-called “first-place curse” has become part of the Final Four discussion. Giorgos Bartzokas, whose Olympiacos teams have often lived under this pressure, dismissed the idea of fearing the curse, joking that if he believed in it he would have tried to lose the final regular-season game (Eurohoops, 2026b; BasketNews, 2026). The joke only works because the tension is real. Finishing first gives prestige, home-court advantage in the playoffs, and proof of consistency, but does not protect a team in the Final Four. Once the semifinal starts, the whole season becomes fragile again.

That fragility is the essence of the format.

Which Format Is Better?

We shouldn’t be asking whether the Final Four or the playoff system is better. Instead, we should ask: better for what and for whom?

For identifying the best team, the playoff system is probably superior. It gives quality more time to express itself and gives randomness less space to interfere. Coaches are right to say that basketball, as a sport, fits naturally with playoff series.

For the fans, however, the Final Four offers something different. It offers danger. It offers hope. It offers the possibility that the best team may not win, and that is not a bug of the format. It brings the drama.

There is also an economic and business dimension to the argument. The Final Four concentrates attention, travel, media coverage, and consumption in one city over a few days. Thousands of fans arrive from different countries, filling hotels, restaurants, bars, transport networks, and arenas. In this sense, the event can create benefits for the host city that would not exist in the same form under a dispersed playoff-series format. At the same time, the economics literature on major sports events warns that the net local impact is often smaller than the headline numbers claimed by organizers and local boosters (Matheson, 2006; Matheson, 2009).

The business logic is not limited to the host city. The Final Four also concentrates attention for sponsors, broadcasters, and commercial partners. Drama has economic value. A one-weekend event creates urgency; urgency creates attention; and attention is what sponsors and broadcasters sell. The Super Bowl is the extreme example: it is not only a football game, but also a media and advertising event. Research on Super Bowl advertising shows that the event is valuable partly because viewers pay attention to the ads and because such advertising can generate measurable revenue effects, even if the effects vary by market and competitive context (Hartmann and Klapper, 2018). The EuroLeague Final Four is obviously not the Super Bowl, but the mechanism is similar. By creating a concentrated spectacle, the Final Four may generate commercial value that a longer and fairer playoff series would dilute.

The Final Four is less fair – and the resulting emotional ride makes it more interesting.

References

EuroLeague Basketball. 2024. Final Four history: Every champion.
→ https://www.euroleaguebasketball.net/euroleague/news/final-four-history-every-champion-all-champions/

CSKA Moscow. 2015. Dimitris Itoudis: We are not the Harlem Globetrotters.
→ https://cskabasket.ru/en/news/n/dimitris-itudis-my-ne-garlem-globtrotters-14416/

Sports Rabbi. 2025. "Basketball equals playoffs" Itoudis and Hapoel Tel Aviv prepare for EuroCup final series against Gran Canaria.
→ https://sportsrabbi.com/en/basketball-equals-playoffs-itoudis-and-hapoel-tel-aviv-prepare-for-eurocup-final-series-against-gran-canaria/

Eurohoops. 2026a. Bartzokas: "Unfortunately, the best team has to play the whole season in one single game."
→ https://www.eurohoops.net/en/trademarks/1824325/giorgos-bartzokas-talks-olympiacos-final-four-euroleague-2/ Note: This article contains a similar quote: "It's very difficult to fit efforts over 70 or 75 games in two 40-minute contests. [...] And everything will be decided in two 40-minute contests."

Hartmann, W. R., and Klapper, D. (2018). "Super Bowl ads." Marketing Science, 37(1), 78–96.
→ DOI: https://doi.org/10.1287/mksc.2017.1055

Olympiacos BC. 2026. Statements from the Presidents after qualifying for the Athens Final Four.
→ https://www.olympiacosbc.gr/en/ Note: The article is featured on the homepage (as of May 2026) but a direct link could not be retrieved. The homepage displays: "Statements from the Presidents after qualifying for the Athens Final Four · Bartzokas: 'Grateful to the entire Olympiacos organization'."

Knowles, G., Sherony, K., and Haupert, M. 1992. The demand for Major League Baseball: A test of the uncertainty of outcome hypothesis. The American Economist, 36(2), 72–80.
→ DOI: https://econpapers.repec.org/article/saeamerec/v_3a36_3ay_3a1992_3ai_3a2_3ap_3a72-80.htm

Matheson, V. A. (2006). "Mega-events: The effect of the world's biggest sporting events on local, regional, and national economies." College of the Holy Cross, Department of Economics Faculty Research Series, Paper No. 06-10.
→ https://crossworks.holycross.edu/econ_working_papers/68/

Matheson, V. A. (2009). "The economics of the Super Bowl." College of the Holy Cross, Department of Economics Working Paper, No. 09-14.
→ https://crossworks.holycross.edu/econ_working_papers/29/

Rascher, D. A. and Solmes, J. P. G. 2007. Do fans want close contests? A test of the uncertainty of outcome hypothesis in the National Basketball Association. International Journal of Sport Finance, 2(3), 130–141.
→ SSRN: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1690886

Eurohoops. 2026b. Giorgos Bartzokas: "If I believed in the top spot curse, I would have tried to lose today."
→ https://www.eurohoops.net/en/euroleague/1956867/giorgos-bartzokas-if-i-believed-in-the-top-spot-curse-i-would-have-tried-to-lose-today/

BasketNews. 2026. EuroLeague seeding history: Best title odds and the first-place curse.
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