By Ethan Greenberg '26
Introduction
At the uppermost levels of international beach volleyball, players must navigate a complex system of tiered tournaments hosted around the world to achieve ranking points and make a living. Players in the highest echelon compete in the Beach Pro Tour’s Elite 16 tournaments, competitions reserved for the sixteen highest-ranked teams in the world (at the time of registration). Just below Elite 16s are Beach Pro Tour Challenge events. While these 24-team contests offer fewer ranking points and less money than the Elite 16s, they’re critical proving grounds for any teams trying to break into top tier tournaments.
Challenge events have an unusual tournament structure. They start by sorting 24 teams into six pools, each with four teams. The top three teams emerging from each four-team pool are seeded into an eighteen-team single-elimination playoff bracket. Within each four-team pool, the two teams that win their initial matches play each other to determine first and second place in the pool, while the losers of those matches play each other in an elimination match; the winner of that elimination match takes third place in the pool and continues on to the playoffs, while the loser is eliminated from the tournament. However, the importance of these elimination matches is indisputable; the value of the “winner vs. winner” match is more ambiguous. Regardless of who wins, both the #1 and #2 teams emerging from each pool get placed into first-round playoff matches. Teams must win four single-elimination playoff matches in a bracket format to win the tournament.
The seemingly inconsequentiality of these “winner vs. winner” second-round pool play games has led to an increasing number of men’s teams skipping these games entirely, forfeiting their second match and accepting their 2nd-in-pool finish. Although forfeiting teams voluntarily accept a worse initial seed to start playoffs, they evidently believe there is more of an advantage in the extra rest, energy conservation, and injury avoidance. Until recently, only a minority of men’s teams took this approach, with roughly one of every six men’s tournament pool winners decided by forfeit. However, in a Challenge event in Haikou, China (November 2-5, 2023), three of the men’s six pool victors were decided by forfeit – the highest percentage of the 2023 season.
This increase in the intentional forfeiting strategy raises an important question: Do teams that
forfeit the #1 vs. #2 pool play matches in Challenge events get better results than those who play all of their assigned matches? This paper aims to identify who actually benefits from a forfeit and whether (and when) teams should continue this strategy in Challenge tournaments.
Methods
For this study, I examined tournament data from all ten of the Challenge events in 2023. These tournaments spanned the Challenge event in La Paz, Mexico (March 16-19, 2023) through the Challenge event in Nuvali, Philippines (November 29-December 3, 2023). Although 2023 was the second year using this Challenge tournament structure, the forfeiting strategy only became popular this season. For each tournament, I analyzed the twelve teams that won their initial match of pool play, then tracked their tournament success, defined as 1) whether they subsequently won their first playoff match and 2) their overall tournament finish in terms of earned ranking points.
In the main draw of Challenge tournaments, teams earn between 300 and 800 ranking points, with point totals scaled to each team’s ultimate finish. Simply by winning their initial match of pool play, all of the teams in this study guarantee themselves at least a ninth-place finish and earn a minimum of 460 points. Teams continue to gain points for each subsequent playoff win, with the tournament champion receiving 800 ranking points.
Results
| Pool Play Result: | 1st (No Forfeit) | 1st (via Forfeit) | 2nd (No Forfeit) | 2nd (Forfeit) |
| Round 1 Win %: | 57.14% | 63.64% | 44.90% | 72.73% |
| Round 1 Record: | 28-21 | 7-4 | 22-27 | 8-3 |
| Total Matches: | 49 | 11 | 49 | 11 |
Table 1: Match Record and Win % by Method of Advancement
In these 2023 Challenge events, teams that did not play in their second match of pool play had a higher winning percentage than teams that did. Among the eleven teams that forfeited their second match, eight proceeded to win their first match in the playoffs. This win percentage (73%) is higher than the win percentage of teams that competed in both matches to win their respective pools (51%). This suggests that teams that only play one match in pool play are more likely to win their first round match of playoffs.
Figure 1: Tournament Finish by Method of Advancement
In Figure 1, I mapped out the distribution and average tournament finishes (with a 95% confidence interval) of teams based on their pool play results and whether the pool winner was decided by a forfeited match. Teams that won their pool resulting from an opponent's forfeit had the highest average finish, averaging 607 ranking points (just above that of a fifth place finish). It makes sense that these teams tend to have the best results because they receive all of the benefits of winning their respective pools (higher seeds in the bracket resulting in theoretically easier competition) without having to expend any excess energy from a second pool play match. Teams that chose to forfeit had only a slightly lower average tournament finish than teams that competed to win their pools, where both had average finishes just below that of fifth place (600 points).
Discussion
To further analyze first round win percentages, I conducted a two-sample z-test to determine whether the observed difference in win percentages was due to random chance. First, I pooled the win percentages of the teams that were not involved in forfeited matches to determine a baseline round 1 win percentage of 51% (50-48). Then, I compared the win percentages of the teams that forfeited against that benchmark. From this test, I found a p-value of 0.085, which means there is an 8.5% chance that the higher win percentage among forfeited teams was from random chance. Although teams that forfeit have a much higher win percentage in the next round, this result is not statistically significant at a 95% confidence interval.
Additionally, I conducted a two-sample t-test to determine if these first round playoff success trends continue through the rest of tournament play. When comparing the average tournament finish of teams that forfeited their second match (587 points) to the average finish of teams that did not forfeit (566 points), I found a p-value of 0.285. This means that there is not significant evidence to prove that forfeiting teams achieve significantly better tournament finishes than teams competing in both matches of pool play. While eight of the eleven forfeiting teams won their first round playoff matches (73%), six of these eight lost in the very next round (quarterfinals). While forfeiting pool play matches may give teams an edge in their first round playoff matchups, there certainly is not convincing evidence that it helps teams make deep runs in the playoffs.
While this pooled data from a small sample may help identify overall trends, a deeper team-by-team analysis may prove helpful in analyzing the efficacy of the forfeiting strategy. Interestingly, ten teams have forfeited a pool play match this season, with Lithuania’s team of Stankevicius / Knasas as the only team that has forfeited twice. For the remainder of this section, I will isolate and analyze the teams that have the most relevant Challenge tournament data to see how forfeiting has affected them.
The team of Stankevicius / Knasas won their first match of pool play in Challenge tournaments four times in the 2023 season. Of these four opportunities, they forfeited their second match twice; one forfeit led to a 9th place finish (Saquarema Challenge Event), and the other led to a 5th place finish (Chiang Mai Challenge Event). This team seems to have similar outcomes regardless of whether they forfeit or play.
Interestingly, the team that has been impacted most significantly by forfeiting hasn’t actually forfeited a single Challenge match. The USA’s team of Evans/Budinger has won its pools via forfeit twice in 2023: in the Challenge tournaments in Saquarema and Haikou. In both tournaments, they went on to win their way into the finals, earning one gold and one silver medal. This is particularly fascinating because this team has never reached the finals of any other tournament that didn’t involve a win-by-forfeit in pool play.
Another American team, Crabb/Brunner, also has repeated experience with forfeits, winning its
pool via forfeit in Haikou and forfeiting to the opponent in Espinho. Similar to Evans/Budinger,
these forfeits also led to finals, with Crabb/Brunner winning a silver in Haikou and a gold in
Espinho. This is only less significant because Crabb/Brunner consistently finish in at least the
quarterfinals of Challenge tournaments.
Table 2: Tournament Results by Team
For each of the ten teams that has forfeited a pool play match, I took all of the Challenge tournament results in which those teams won their first match for the table above. Of the eleven total forfeits in the 2023 season, four led to finishes above the team’s median, four were equivalent to the median, and three led to finishes below the team’s median performance. This extremely even distribution of results suggests that forfeiting these matches likely has little impact (positive or negative) on a team’s overall tournament finish.
Conclusion
The analysis done for this paper shows that forfeiting the “winner vs. winner” game of modified pool play may be advantageous in some ways for teams competing in beach volleyball Challenge tournaments. Teams that forfeit these matches have a higher win percentage in their first round of playoffs as well as a higher average tournament finish than teams that compete in and win both of their pool play matches. However, none of these differences is statistically significant, which means we cannot conclude from this data alone that forfeiting is the optimal strategy to succeed in Challenge tournaments. That being said, with higher round 1 win percentages and higher average tournament finishes, there is very little evidence to suggest that forfeiting pool play matches is detrimental to tournament success in any way.
Regardless of who the real winners of the forfeiting strategy are, the losers are the Beach Pro Tour and the fans. Such behavior is obviously bad for the sport, and fans are understandably disappointed when they do not get to see their favorite teams play. The players have exposed a clear flaw in the tournament structure, and it must be corrected for the sake of the sport.
This is best exemplified by Pool A in the Haikou Challenge tournament, where the opposing teams of Crabb/Brunner (USA) and Heidrich/Dillier (Switzerland) both wanted to forfeit their pool play match against one another to position themselves on the opposite side of the bracket from Herrera/Gavira (Spain). To decide this, they played a high stakes game of rock-paper-scissors, where the winner got rewarded by finishing second in the pool! Although this paper’s analysis shows how winning a pool via forfeit is an advantage, this sort of behavior is rare in any other sport. However, the Beach Pro Tour is unlikely to change the Challenge events for at least another year (Mewhirter, SANDCAST). Therefore, this broken tournament structure and the forfeiting strategy will likely remain a constant in international beach volleyball for at least a while longer.
As for an alternative tournament structure, the Beach Pro Tour could change the size of their
main draw to either 16 or 32 teams. Both other types of Beach Pro Tour events (Elite 16 and Futures) have sixteen-team main draws that funnel into twelve-team playoff brackets, rewarding the winners of each four-team pool with a first round bye (Beach Volleyball Database). If the Beach Pro Tour still wants Challenge events to have larger main draws, they could simply use a 32-team main draw with eight pools of four.
However, if the Beach Pro Tour insists on a 24-team main draw for Challenge events, I propose an alternate tournament structure: eight pools of three. Each team would play the other two teams in their designated pool. The top two teams from each of the eight pools would qualify for a 16-team playoff bracket. Although this structure does not entirely eliminate the opportunity to forfeit, it decreases such opportunities from 6 games per tournament to an expected 2 games per tournament (only if the same team loses in the first two matches in a pool). Hopefully, forfeiting professional beach volleyball games soon becomes a thing of the past so fans can enjoy the sport to the fullest.
References
Beach Volleyball Database, Accessed December 10, 2023. http://www.bvbinfo.com/default_home.asp
Mewhirter, Travis. “Road To Paris: Maybe those USA partnership changes weren't such a bad
move after all” SANDCAST: Beach Volleyball with Tri Bourne and Travis Mewhirter, November
7, 2023. https://youtu.be/P30P36eDa6A
Mewhirter, Travis. “Wait ... why is everyone forfeiting at the Haikou Challenge?” Volleyball
Magazine, November 3, 2023. https://volleyballmag.com/haikou-challenge-teams-forfeiting-110323/
Stockerauer Beachvolleyballverein, “Tournament Calendar 2023.” Accessed December 10,
2023. https://fivb.12ndr.at/?season=2023&international=fivb
Volleyball World, “Beach Pro Tour Events.” Accessed December 10, 2023.
https://en.volleyballworld.com/beachvolleyball/competitions/beach-pro-tour/2023/#Challenge