Seeding in tournaments is a process of creating a schedule based on performance in the recent past. It is used in many athletic disciplines to ensure that particularly attractive match ups do not occur until the later stages of the tournament. We exploit the discontinuous nature of the seeding system in the UEFA Champions League and the UEFA Europa League as a natural experiment to estimate the causal effect of being seeded. We find no evidence that seeding itself contributes positively to the team’s success in the tournament. This finding is surprising given the substantial drop in average strength of the opponents for seeded teams and in striking opposition to the findings of previous studies.

锦标赛中的种子是根据最近的表现创建时间表的过程。它用于许多运动学科，以确保直到比赛后期才进行特别吸引人的比赛。我们利用自然实验来评估欧洲冠军联赛和欧洲冠军联赛中播种系统的不连续性，以评估播种的因果关系。我们没有证据表明播种本身可以为球队在锦标赛中的成功做出积极贡献。鉴于种子球队的对手平均实力大幅下降，并且强烈反对先前的研究结果，这一发现令人惊讶。