IJAHP Article: Nisel, Özdemir /AHP/ANP in sports: A comprehensive literature review International Journal of the Analytic Hierarchy Process 405 Vol. 8 Issue 3 2016 ISSN 1936-6744 http://dx.doi.org/10.13033/ijahp.v8i3. 448 AHP/ANP IN SPORTS: A COMPREHENSIVE LITERATURE REVIEW Seyhan Nisel School of Business, Istanbul University Turkey sipahi@istanbul.edu.tr Muhlis Özdemir School of Business, Istanbul University Turkey muhlisozdemir@istanbul.edu.tr ABSTRACT Since the invention of AHP/ANP, several literature review studies have been presented to summarize theoretical developments and different application areas of its techniques. The purpose of this study is to present a comprehensive literature review of AHP and ANP applications in the field of sports. A total of 62 sports related AHP and ANP articles were selected, categorized and analyzed in this study. The findings show that AHP and ANP techniques have successfully been used for performance evaluation of teams, player selection and ranking, team or club performance ranking and coach evaluation in many sport branches. Keywords: AHP; ANP; sport applications; literature review 1. Introduction The Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) technique, developed by Thomas L. Saaty in the 1970s, is a multi-criteria decision making technique that can incorporate both objective and subjective judgments in the decision making process. It can deal with complex decision problems by decomposing the problem into a hierarchical structure, and it has been widely used in many areas of science, engineering, business and management in the last four decades. The Analytic Network Process (ANP) technique, which is a generalization of AHP and developed by Saaty in the late 1990’s, can deal with dependencies and feedback in the hierarchy that looks more like a network (Saaty, 2001). Although its methodological structure is more complex than the AHP algorithm, there are numerous real world applications of ANP in many fields and it has been used as an accurate decision making tool in the last 20 years. Since its inception, AHP has been studied extensively and has become a prominently used technique in the literature. As a result, several literature review studies have been conducted to summarize theoretical developments and different application areas of AHP and ANP techniques. Firstly, Shim (1989) provided a comprehensive bibliographical survey of studies on AHP. The study used the DIALOG online information retrieval mailto:sipahi@istanbul.edu.tr mailto:muhlisozdemir@istanbul.edu.tr IJAHP Article: Nisel, Özdemir /AHP/ANP in sports: A comprehensive literature review International Journal of the Analytic Hierarchy Process 406 Vol. 8 Issue 3 2016 ISSN 1936-6744 http://dx.doi.org/10.13033/ijahp.v8i3. 448 service and 141 references of methodological and applied papers as well as 21 dissertation studies on AHP for the period from 1979–1988 were categorized. Vargas (1990) presented a literature review study of AHP and its applications. This study stated that AHP was a relatively young theory and was finding more advocates in both the theoretical and the applied sciences day by day. It also allocated and classified AHP related papers by area such as economic/management problems, political problems, social problems, technological problems and books of applications. In another study, Apostolou and Hassell (1993) reviewed AHP papers in accounting literature, and presented a discussion of the AHP and its applications in accounting throughout the years. Vaidya and Kumar (2006) grouped the references regionally and yearly in order to track the increase of applications of AHP. Liberatore and Nydick (2008) presented a literature review of the application of the AHP in medical and health care decision making since 1997. In this study, 50 papers were classified by diagnosis, patient participation, therapy/treatment, organ transplantation, project and technology evaluation and selection, human resource planning, and health care evaluation and policy (Liberatore & Nydick, 2008). Ho (2008) gathered related articles that appeared in international journals from 1997 -2006 and reviewed the literature of the applications of the integrated AHPs. This paper stated that mathematical programming, quality function deployment, meta- heuristics, SWOT analysis and Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) were commonly combined with the AHP in integrated studies. Sipahi and Timor (2010) presented a comprehensive literature review of applications of AHP as well as ANP for the years 2005‐2009. The paper also covers fuzzy AHP and fuzzy ANP applications (Sipahi & Timor, 2010). Ishizaka and Labib (2011) theoretically reviewed AHP articles rather than classifying them by application areas. In their study, they discussed problem modelling, pairwise comparisons, judgment scales, derivation methods, consistency indices, incomplete matrix, synthesis of the weights, sensitivity analysis and group decisions issues (Ishizaka & Labib, 2011). Subramanian and Ramanathan (2012) reviewed and methodologically analyzed applications of AHP in operations management between the years 1990-2009. They categorized 291 application papers of AHP into operations strategy, process and product design, planning and scheduling resources, project management, managing the supply chain (Subramanian & Ramanathan, 2012). AHP based approaches for supplier evaluation were studied by Bruno et al (2012). In their study, they highlighted the weak and strong points emerging from the implementation of the AHP in a supply chain (Bruno et al., 2012). Finally, Russo and Camanho (2015) presented a systematic review of the literature on real cases that applied AHP to evaluate how the criteria were being defined and measured. Here, 33 cases used in the literature to build the criteria and calculate the weights in AHP or Fuzzy AHP contrary to other techniques which were used to evaluate alternatives were reviewed (Russo & Camanho, 2015). Since the 1980’s, the AHP methodology has been widely used in the field of sports. In the last two decades, ANP has also been utilized as a decision making tool in several branches of sports. However, a literature analysis about the use of AHP and ANP techniques in the area of sports has not been presented until now. The purpose of this study is to present a comprehensive literature review of AHP and ANP applications in several sports branches. The paper is organized as follows. The process of the research methodology is described in the next section. Analysis and classifications of the literature IJAHP Article: Nisel, Özdemir /AHP/ANP in sports: A comprehensive literature review International Journal of the Analytic Hierarchy Process 407 Vol. 8 Issue 3 2016 ISSN 1936-6744 http://dx.doi.org/10.13033/ijahp.v8i3. 448 are presented in section 3. In this section, articles are categorized and discussed by purpose of study and by sports branch. The last section is devoted to conclusions, remarks and suggestions for future research. 2. Research methodology To conduct a comprehensive literature search on sports applications of AHP and ANP, peer reviewed journal articles written in the English language from 1980-2016 were carefully retrieved from the ISI Web of Science, ScienceDirect, EbscoHost (Academic Source Premier and Business Source Complete), Emerald, Taylor and Francis, Proquest ABI Inform, Ingenta, Ovid, Medline and InderScience academic databases. Books, book chapters, conference proceedings, and Master’s and Doctoral theses were excluded from the study. The International Journal of the Analytic Hierarchy Process was also included in the study. During the literature search, studies in all areas of sports including physical activity (competitive or non-competitive) were considered. Four keywords (“Analytic Hierarchy Process”, “AHP”, “Analytic Network Process”, “ANP”) combined with “sport” were used in the first searching phase. The second searching phase was broadened, and the AHP and ANP keywords were combined with many sports related descriptors (football (soccer), basketball, baseball, volleyball, Olympic, national games, hockey, tennis, racing, swimming, handball, rugby, American football, cycling, riding, cricket, badminton, archery, chess, polo, golf, gymnastic, physical training and stadium in order to obtain a comprehensive list of articles. A total of 62 articles were identified for the literature review, and all articles were meticulously analyzed in terms of sports relation and in terms of technique(s) used in the study. Information about 62 articles were coded and recorded in MS Excel under the following categories:  Publication title  Source title (Journal name)  Author(s)  Affiliation of Author(s)  Publication year  Branch(es) of sport  Methodology or methodologies used (AHP, ANP and other integrated techniques)  Problem definition  Number of citations in Google Scholar (As of November 19, 2016) Articles were categorized and analyzed according to several questions. Section 3 presents the classifications and analysis of the literature. 3. Classifications and analysis 3.1 Number of publications by AHP and ANP As presented in Table 1 and Figure 1 the AHP method was used significantly in the studies. Out of 62 articles, 32 directly used AHP for the decision-making problem, while IJAHP Article: Nisel, Özdemir /AHP/ANP in sports: A comprehensive literature review International Journal of the Analytic Hierarchy Process 408 Vol. 8 Issue 3 2016 ISSN 1936-6744 http://dx.doi.org/10.13033/ijahp.v8i3. 448 19 integrated AHP with some other techniques. The technique that was most often integrated with AHP was TOPSIS, followed by DEA, Delphi method and ANP respectively (Figure 1). In Table 1 and Figure 1, some studies were counted more than once for collaborative techniques (for instance, a study which integrated AHP and ANP was counted as AHP integrated study and also ANP integrated study). Table 1 Number of publications of AHP and ANP Figure 1. Percentages of integrated methods with AHP In Figure 1, other techniques (43%) integrated with AHP were input output analysis, SAW, entropy method, regression tree, decision tree, DEMATEL, grey systems, ANOVA, GIS and causality diagram. The publications that integrated AHP and these techniques in the field of sports were classified and are presented in the following sections. 3.2 Percentage of publications by different period of time Figure 2 shows the percentage of publications by the period of time they were published. As can be seen, only 10% of the publications were published before the year 2000. Between the years 2000-2009, the number of papers increased with 22% of the papers belonging to that time period. However, between the years 2010-2016, the number of publications increased significantly with 68% of the publications published in the last Method Number of Publications AHP studies 32 AHP integrated Studies 19 ANP 3 ANP integrated Studies 2 Fuzzy AHP 5 Fuzzy AHP integrated Studies 3 Total 64 IJAHP Article: Nisel, Özdemir /AHP/ANP in sports: A comprehensive literature review International Journal of the Analytic Hierarchy Process 409 Vol. 8 Issue 3 2016 ISSN 1936-6744 http://dx.doi.org/10.13033/ijahp.v8i3. 448 seven years. This figure demonstrates a significant increase in the number of publications of AHP in the field of sports in recent years. Figure 2. Percentages of number of publications by different time period 3.3 Classification by country (author affiliation) Table 2 presents the frequency distribution of papers by author affiliation. As shown in the Table 2, China has the largest number of publications in the field with 17 papers followed by the US (14 papers) and Iran (6 papers). Korea (5), Taiwan (5), Croatia (4), and Turkey (4) are other significant contributing countries in the field with a number of papers. India, Israel and Japan are the other countries that have contributions. Switzerland, Finland, Georgia, Kenya, and Poland are countries that have at least one paper contributed to the field. As can be seen from the table, authors from 15 different countries used AHP or ANP techniques in the sports field in their studies. Four publications were counted more than once for collaborative studies. Table 2 Number of publications by country (author affiliations) Country Name (Affiliation of Authors) Number of Publications Country Name (Affiliation of Authors) Number of Publications China 17 Israel 2 US 14 Japan 2 Iran 6 Switzerland 1 Korea 5 Finland 1 Taiwan 5 Georgia 1 Croatia 4 Kenya 1 Turkey 4 Poland 1 India 2 Total 66 IJAHP Article: Nisel, Özdemir /AHP/ANP in sports: A comprehensive literature review International Journal of the Analytic Hierarchy Process 410 Vol. 8 Issue 3 2016 ISSN 1936-6744 http://dx.doi.org/10.13033/ijahp.v8i3. 448 3.4 Classification by journal According to literature search results, six papers out of sixty-two were published in the journal entitled Advanced Materials Research (see Table 3). Table 3 also indicates that Applied Mechanics and Materials and Collegium Antropologicum made contributions to the field with four and three papers respectively. Table 3 Top journals by number of publications Journal Name Number of publications Advanced Materials Research 6 Applied Mechanics and Materials 4 Collegium Antropologicum 3 Interfaces 2 International Journal of Analytic Hierarchy Process 2 Mathematical and Computer Modeling 2 Other Journals 43 Total 62 Interfaces, International Journal of Analytic Hierarchy Process and Mathematical and Computer Modeling are also significant journals with two publications each. Forty-three different journals contributed at least one publication to the sports field with AHP or ANP models. Journals were also classified by the total number of citations of the publications in the literature search. Table 4 shows the top fifteen journals with the highest number of citations. The number of citations of the publications was obtained from Google Scholar on November 19, 2016. When the number of citations is considered, European Journal of Operational Research has the highest number of citations (216) with just one paper followed by Interfaces (107) and Collegium Antropologicum (89) respectively. In Table 5, the top ten most highly cited papers have also been presented. IJAHP Article: Nisel, Özdemir /AHP/ANP in sports: A comprehensive literature review International Journal of the Analytic Hierarchy Process 411 Vol. 8 Issue 3 2016 ISSN 1936-6744 http://dx.doi.org/10.13033/ijahp.v8i3. 448 Table 4 Top journals by number of citations Journal Name Number of Citations of Publications European Journal of Operational Research 216 Interfaces 107 Collegium Antropologicum 89 Sport Management Review 61 Journal of the Operational Research Society 35 Journal of the operations research Society of Japan 29 Sport, Business and Management: An International Journal 25 Computers & Operations Research 24 Management Decision 22 Mathematical Modelling 21 Mathematical and Computer Modelling 13 American Journal of Operations Research 12 Expert Systems with Applications 12 Journal of Multi‐Criteria Decision Analysis 12 Journal of Systems Science and Systems Engineering 10 IJAHP Article: Nisel, Özdemir /AHP/ANP in sports: A comprehensive literature review International Journal of the Analytic Hierarchy Process 412 Vol. 8 Issue 3 2016 ISSN 1936-6744 http://dx.doi.org/10.13033/ijahp.v8i3. 448 Table 5 Top 10 most highly cited papers (Google Scholar, November 19, 2016) Publication Name Methodology Used Branches of Sport Number of Citations (11/19/2016) Partovi, F. Y., & Corredoira, R. A. (2002). Quality function deployment for the good of soccer. European journal of operational research, 137(3), 642-656. AHP & QFD & ANP Football 216 Carlsson, C., & Walden, P. (1995). AHP in political group decisions: A study in the art of possibilities. Interfaces, 25(4), 14-29. AHP Ice hockey 97 Trninić, S., & Dizdar, D. (2000). System of the performance evaluation criteria weighted per positions in the basketball game. Collegium antropologicum, 24(1), 217-234. AHP Basketball 79 Lee, S., & Walsh, P. (2011). SWOT and AHP hybrid model for sport marketing outsourcing using a case of intercollegiate sport. Sport Management Review, 14(4), 361-369. AHP & SWOT General 61 Sinuany-Stern, Z. (1988). Ranking of sports teams via the AHP. Journal of the Operational Research Society, 39(7), 661-667. AHP Football 35 Nishizawa, K. (1995). A consistency improving method in binary AHP. Journal of the operations research Society of Japan, 38(1), 21-33. AHP Baseball, Tennis 29 Lee, S., & Ross, S. D. (2012). Sport sponsorship decision making in a global market: An approach of Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP). Sport, Business and Management: An International Journal, 2(2), 156-168. AHP General 25 Bodin, L., & Epstein, E. (2000). Who’s on first–with probability 0.4. Computers & Operations Research, 27(3), 205-215. AHP Baseball 24 Liao, S. K., & Chang, K. L. (2009). Select televised sportscasters for Olympic Games by analytic network process. Management Decision, 47(1), 14-23. ANP Olympic Games 22 Vachnadze, R. G., & Markozashvili, N. I. (1987). Some applications of the analytic hierarchy process. Mathematical Modelling, 9(3-5), 185-191. AHP Relay race 21 3.5 General classification by branches of sports Football (or soccer in US originated studies) was found to be the most popular sport in AHP or ANP studies during the literature search. Table 6 shows a large amount of papers were related to football (13 publications). Basketball is the second most popular sport with nine publications, followed by baseball and the Olympic Games with seven publications each. Athletics, hockey and tennis were also found to be significant sports in the literature. American football, badminton, cricket, and physical education branches can also be considered significant with two publications each. In the literature, AHP was IJAHP Article: Nisel, Özdemir /AHP/ANP in sports: A comprehensive literature review International Journal of the Analytic Hierarchy Process 413 Vol. 8 Issue 3 2016 ISSN 1936-6744 http://dx.doi.org/10.13033/ijahp.v8i3. 448 used in many other branches of sports. Moreover, several studies that were not directly related to any specific branch of sports, but related to the sports field in general were also found in the literature. These studies were categorized as “other sports or general studies” in Table 6, and they are mentioned in more detail in the Section 3.10 and also presented in Table 11. Studies that discussed more than one sports branch were counted more than once. Table 6 Top 10 highly cited papers (Google Scholar, November 19, 2016) Sport Branches Number of Publications Sport Branches Number of Publications Sport Branches Number of Publications Football 13 Athletics 4 Badminton 2 Basketball 9 Hockey 4 Cricket 2 Baseball 7 Tennis 3 Physical education 2 Olympic and National Games 7 American Football 2 Other sports and general studies 16 TOTAL: 71 3.6 Football studies As mentioned in the previous section, football has a dominant place among AHP studies in the field of sports. Thirteen out of sixty-two articles applied AHP to the football field, and TOPSIS was the technique mainly integrated with AHP in football related studies. As can be seen in the Table 7, since the year 1987, the AHP technique has been used for performance evaluation of football teams, player selection, selection of Golden Ball winners, trainer and coach evaluation, ranking teams and clubs, world cup football tournament evaluation, factor evaluation of rules, measuring football performance and comparing the great records. 3.7 Basketball studies Basketball was found to be the second most popular sport among AHP studies. As presented in the Table 8, a large portion of the studies were carried out after the year 2000, and five studies out of nine were performed in 2014. Tang and Dong (2014) presented an AHP-DEA integrated model for selecting the best coaches in basketball, baseball and hockey. Cao (2014) also used AHP for coach evaluation in basketball. In another study, Balli and Korukoglu (2014) utilized Fuzzy AHP and TOPSIS for developing a decision support framework for the selection of player candidates in basketball. Also, Wan et al. (2014) used AHP and Input-Output Analysis for coach evaluation in basketball, American football and baseball, whereas Xiong et al. (2014) used AHP, fuzzy synthetic evaluation and entropy method for coach evaluation in basketball. Table 8 shows that the AHP technique was also used in basketball for performance evaluation of players, evaluation of basketball teams, performance evaluation in the game , and for selecting and comparing a number of great records in basketball, baseball, football and hockey (Yu et al.; Sinuany-Stern, 2006; Trninić and Dizdar, 2000; Golden and Wasil, 1987). IJAHP Article: Nisel, Özdemir /AHP/ANP in sports: A comprehensive literature review International Journal of the Analytic Hierarchy Process 414 Vol. 8 Issue 3 2016 ISSN 1936-6744 http://dx.doi.org/10.13033/ijahp.v8i3. 448 3.8 Baseball studies In the literature search, baseball was also found to be a popular sport in AHP studies. Table 9 shows seven studies out of sixty-two were related to baseball. Table 9 also shows that some other multi-criteria decision-making techniques such as DEA, TOPSIS and input output analysis were integrated with AHP in the studies conducted in 2014. Coach evaluation, pitcher selection, player and team ranking, and performance evaluation of players were popular subjects in AHP related studies in the baseball field. IJAHP Article: Nisel, Özdemir /AHP/ANP in sports: A comprehensive literature review International Journal of the Analytic Hierarchy Process 415 Vol. 8 Issue 3 2016 ISSN 1936-6744 http://dx.doi.org/10.13033/ijahp.v8i3. 448 Table 7 Football studies Publication Name Authors Year Method Problem Definition A mathematical model using AHP priorities for soccer player selection: a case study Ozceylan, E 2016 AHP Soccer player selection Who really won the FIFA 2014 Golden Ball Award?: What sports can learn from multi-criteria decision analysis Mu, E. 2016 AHP Selecting the Golden Ball winner Privatization priorities of Iranian football clubs from the perspective of experts Shahlaee, J., Ghorbanalizadeh Ghaziani, F. 2015 AHP, TOPSIS, SAW Measuring privatization priorities of Iranian football clubs Data processing and modelling with information technology in choosing college best trainer Li, P. L 2014 Delphi method, AHP Choosing a good college trainer An MCDM reflection on the FIFA 2014 World Cup Mu, E. 2014 AHP Selecting the Golden Ball award winner Prioritization of the factors effecting privatization in sport clubs: with AHP & TOPSIS methods-emphasis in football Salimi, M. et al. 2012 AHP, TOPSIS Prioritization of the factors effecting privatization in sport clubs Ranking football teams with AHP and TOPSIS methods Kiani Mavi, R. et al. 2012 AHP, TOPSIS Ranking football teams Evaluating the performance of Iranian football teams utilizing linear programming Hamidi, M. et al. 2011 DEA, AHP Evaluating the performance of Iranian football teams utilizing linear programming FARSJUM, a fuzzy system for ranking sparse judgment matrices: a case study in soccer tournaments. Gholamian, M. R. et al. 2007 AHP World Cup soccer tournament evaluation Importance of hierarchical structure determining tennis performance for modern defensive baseliner Yun, Y. K. 2005 AHP Prioritizing psychological factors determining football performance Quality function deployment for the good of soccer Fariborz Y. Partovi, Rafael A. Corredoira 2002 AHP,QFD , ANP Prioritizing and designing rule changes for the game of soccer Ranking of sports teams via the AHP Sinuany-Stern, Z. 1988 AHP Predicting the ranking of the 16 soccer teams of the Israeli National League Ranking outstanding sports records Golden, B. L., Wasil, E. A. 1987 AHP Selecting and comparing a number of great records IJAHP Article: Nisel, Özdemir /AHP/ANP in sports: A comprehensive literature review International Journal of the Analytic Hierarchy Process 416 Vol. 8 Issue 3 2016 ISSN 1936-6744 http://dx.doi.org/10.13033/ijahp.v8i3. 448 Table 8 Basketball studies Publication Name Authors Year Method Problem Definition Assessment of coaches using Data Envelopment Analysis and Analytical Hierarchy Process Tang, H. C., Dong, Y. A. 2014 AHP, DEA Selecting the best coaches Coach evaluation method based on AHP Cao, X. 2014 AHP Coach evaluation Development of a fuzzy decision support framework for complex multi‐attribute decision problems: A case study for the selection of skilful basketball players. Ballı, S., Korukoğlu, S. 2014 Fuzzy AHP, TOPSIS Developing a decision support framework for player selection Evaluation of College Coach Capacity in USA Wan, F. X., Hu, D., Tian, J. 2014 AHP, Input Output Analysis Coach evaluation Evaluation system for college coaching legends Xiong, F. et al. 2014 AHP, Fuzzy Synthetic Evaluation, Entropy Method Coach evaluation An exploratory study of long-term performance evaluation for elite basketball players Kun-Tzu Yu, Zhong-Xin Su, Rui-Chen Zhuang 2008 AHP Long-term technical performance evaluation method for elite basketball players Application of the analytic hierarchy process for the evaluation of basketball teams Zilla Sinuany- Stern 2006 AHP Evaluation of basketball teams System of the performance evaluation criteria weighted per positions in the basketball game S. Trnini, and D. Dizdar 2000 AHP Performance evaluation criteria weighted per positions in the basketball game Ranking outstanding sports records Golden, B. L., Wasil, E. A. 1987 AHP Selecting and comparing a number of great records IJAHP Article: Nisel, Özdemir /AHP/ANP in sports: A comprehensive literature review International Journal of the Analytic Hierarchy Process 417 Vol. 8 Issue 3 2016 ISSN 1936-6744 http://dx.doi.org/10.13033/ijahp.v8i3. 448 Table 9 Baseball Studies Publication Name Authors Year Branch of Sport Method Problem Definition Assessment of coaches using Data Envelopment Analysis and Analytical Hierarchy Process Tang, H. C., Dong, Y. A. 2014 Baseball, Hockey, basketball AHP, DEA Selecting the best coaches Professional baseball team starting pitcher selection using AHP and TOPSIS methods. Chen, C. C., Lee, Y. T., Tsai, C. M. 2014 Baseball AHP & TOPSIS Selecting starting pitchers Evaluation of college coach capacity in USA Wan, F. X., Hu, D., Tian, J. 2014 Basketball, American football, baseball AHP, Input Output Analysis Coach evaluation Who’s on first–with probability 0.4. Bodin, L., Epstein, E. 2000 Baseball AHP Ranking players of a baseball team A consistency improving method in binary AHP Nishizawa, K. 1995 Baseball, Tennis AHP Ranking teams in league An analytic hierarchy approach to major league baseball offensive performance ratings Lanoue, M. R., & Revetta, J. J. 1993 Baseball AHP Performance evaluation of major league players Ranking outstanding sports records Golden, B. L., Wasil, E. A. 1987 Baseball, basketball, football,hockey AHP Selecting and comparing a number of great records IJAHP Article: Nisel, Özdemir /AHP/ANP in sports: A comprehensive literature review International Journal of the Analytic Hierarchy Process 418 Vol. 8 Issue 3 2016 ISSN 1936-6744 http://dx.doi.org/10.13033/ijahp.v8i3. 448 Table 10 Studies about Olympic or National games Publication Name Authors Year Branch of Sport Method Problem Definition Ranking countries more reliably in the Summer Olympics Sagir, M., Saaty, T. L 2015 Olympic Games ANP Evaluating the medals won and the country scores in the 2012 London Olympics Ranking countries by medal priorities won in the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics. Saaty, T. L. et al. 2014 Olympic Games AHP Ranking countries Rankings in sport by pairwise comparison and league table Sitarz, S. 2013 Olympic Games AHP Describing a method of creating rankings in sport (medal tables). On emergency of large scale engineering sports events Junying, A. 2012 National Games Fuzzy AHP Emergency assessment Who won the Winter 2010 Olympics? A quest into priorities and rankings. Saaty, T. L. 2010 Olympic Games AHP Assigning appropriate weights to each type of medal Select televised sportscasters for Olympic Games by analytic by network process Sen-Kuei Liao, Kuei- Lun Chang 2009 Olympic Games ANP Selecting televised sportscasters for Olympic Games Who won the 2008 Olympics? A multicriteria decision of measuring intangibles Saaty, T. L. 2008 Olympic Games AHP Country ranking in 2008 Olympic Games http://www.springerlink.com/content/uw452265k482/?p=c1c2bce945544133a6e4da7857268311&pi=0 IJAHP Article: Nisel, Özdemir /AHP/ANP in sports: A comprehensive literature review International Journal of the Analytic Hierarchy Process 419 Vol. 8 Issue 3 2016 ISSN 1936-6744 http://dx.doi.org/10.13033/ijahp.v8i3. 448 3.9 Studies about Olympic games or national games The literature search revealed that AHP and ANP methodologies have also been used in several studies as decision-making tools in the field of Olympic Games or National Games. Seven studies have been conducted since 2008, and Table 10 shows that Thomas L. Saaty was the author that contributed the most AHP studies in the field of Olympic Games. Sagir and Saaty (2015) presented an ANP model for evaluating the medals won and the country scores in the 2012 London Olympics. Saaty et al. (2014) utilized AHP for ranking countries by medal priorities in the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics. In another study, Sitarz (2013) described a method for obtaining ranking of medal tables in the Olympic Games using AHP. Junying (2012) presented a fuzzy AHP model for emergency assessment in national games. Saaty (2010) used AHP again for assigning appropriate weights to each type of medal in the Winter 2010 Olympics. Liao and Chang (2009) used the ANP technique for selecting televised sportscasters for the Olympic Games. In the earliest study, Saaty (2008) used AHP for obtaining a country ranking in the 2008 Olympic Games. The studies reviewed and shown in Table 10 conclude that AHP and ANP techniques can be successfully applied to obtain and develop a medal or country ranking system in the Olympic Games. 3.10 Other sports and general studies Besides football, basketball, baseball and the Olympic Games, AHP and ANP techniques have also been used in many other areas of sports in the last 25 years. These sport branches are athletics, hockey, tennis, American football, badminton, cricket, physical training, archery, golf, judo, leisure sports, relay race, running, swimming, volleyball and water polo. Table 11 summarizes the studies in these branches of sport. During the literature search, it became apparent that some studies were not directly related to any branch of sports. In these general studies, the AHP technique was used for performance evaluation of sport centers, assessing performance of sports buildings, risk evaluation for stadium construction, and factor evaluation for sport marketing outsourcing decision. IJAHP Article: Nisel, Özdemir /AHP/ANP in sports: A comprehensive literature review International Journal of the Analytic Hierarchy Process 420 Vol. 8 Issue 3 2016 ISSN 1936-6744 http://dx.doi.org/10.13033/ijahp.v8i3. 448 Table 11 Studies about other sports and general studies Publication Name Authors Year Branch of Sport Method Problem Definition Study on the influencing factors of applying nanotechnology in sport injury repair based on Analytic Hierarchy Process Ding, L. 2016 Athletics AHP Analyzing main factors influencing the application of nanotechnology in athletes injury repair Importance of hierarchical structure determining tennis performance for modern defensive baseliner Đurović, N., Dizdar, D., Zagorac, N. 2015 Tennis AHP Analyzing offensive and defensive tennis priorities for counterpunchers The relative importance of performance factors in Korean archery Kim, H. B., Kim, S. H., So, W. Y 2015 Archery Delphi method, AHP Evaluating factors affecting archery performance AHP-neural network based player price estimation in IPL Dey, P. K. et all. 2014 Cricket AHP, ANP Player price estimation Choose the best coach based on the rheory of grey system Zhao, J. 2014 Athletics Grey system, AHP Selecting the best college coaches Coaches ranking: A time-irrelevant data mining solution with flexibility and objectivity Chen, Y. Y. et all. 2014 Athletics Regression tree, decision tree (CART), AHP Ranking of coaches Establishment on comprehensive evaluation indication system for leisure sports development level Zhang, L., Wang, Z. L. 2014 Leisure sports AHP Evaluating the present situation of leisure sports development level Evaluation of sports center performance using a fuzzy multi- criteria decision-making model Wang, C. Y 2014 General Fuzzy AHP Evaluate the performance of sports centers Evaluation research on competitive ability of volleyball player based on fuzzy set of evaluation index and weight Kai, G. 2014 Volleyball AHP Evaluating the competitive ability of volleyball player Identifying the best Coach by an improved AHP model Xing, J. et all. 2014 American Football AHP Evaluation of coaches in college ball game Selection and concentration strategy in the sports exchange between North and South Korea. Yu, K. G., Park, S. Y. 2014 General Delphi method, AHP Strategy selection and concentration in inter-Korean sports exchange The practice of two-phase recommender system for sporting goods Lo, W. T. et all. 2014 Badminton AHP Developing a recommendation technique to improve the selling of sporting goods specialty stores Why do some elite players accomplish their Grand Slam goals while others fail? Djurovic, N. et all. 2014 Tennis AHP Accelerating the player’s development Constructing Taipei city sports centre performance evaluation model with fuzzy MCDM approach based on views of managers Wang, C. Y. et all. 2013 General FAHP, FANP, Dematel Recognizing the influential indicators of sport centre business management in Taipei city's sports centre IJAHP Article: Nisel, Özdemir /AHP/ANP in sports: A comprehensive literature review International Journal of the Analytic Hierarchy Process 421 Vol. 8 Issue 3 2016 ISSN 1936-6744 http://dx.doi.org/10.13033/ijahp.v8i3. 448 Table 11 Studies about other sports and general studies (Continued) Publication Name Authors Year Branch of Sport Method Problem Definition Research on the preventive measures of sports injury based on causality diagram and analytic hierarchy process Zhou, Z. X 2013 Physical education Causality diagram, AHP Analyzing the factors of injury accident in physical education teaching process The green energy-saving design of stadium Chen, X. J. 2013 General AHP Assessing environmental performance of green sports building Efficiency analysis of provincial departments of physical education in Iran Soleimani-Damaneh J. et all. 2012 Physical education DEA, AHP Analyzing the performance of physical education organizations in Iran. Forecasting rounds of golf Parrott, S. et all. 2012 Golf AHP Making adjustments to statistical forecasts of golf demand at a course Sport sponsorship decision making in a global market: An approach of Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP). Lee, S., Ross, S. D. 2012 General AHP Identifying the decision making factors of sport sponsorship in the global market context Statistical based multi-criteria decision making analysis for performance measurement of batsmen in Indian Premier League Dey, P. K., et all. 2012 Cricket TOPSIS, AHP, ANOVA Measuring the performance of batsmen Fuzzy Analytic Hierarchy in project risk management-New stadium construction project in Weifang City Zhang, Y., Liu, C. J 2011 General Fuzzy AHP Construction project risk assessment SWOT and AHP hybrid model for sport marketing outsourcing using a case of intercollegiate sport Lee, S., Walsh, P. 2011 General AHP, SWOT Examining sport marketing outsourcing decision-making factors using a SWOT and AHP combined model Evaluation of individual and team judo strengths using AHP technique and team competition data Hirose, N. et al. 2010 Judo AHP Evaluating individual and team judo strengths Developing computer aided model for selecting talent players in badminton Ali Agilonu, Serkan Balli 2009 Badminton Fuzzy AHP Selecting talent players in badminton Efficient management design for swimming exercise treatment Kim, K. et al. 2009 Swimming Fuzzy AHP Design a swimming-based exercise treatment management system Experts opinion about system of the performance evaluation criteria weighted per positons in the water polo game Hraste, M., Dizdar, D., Trninić, V. 2008 Water polo AHP Water polo players’ actual quality evaluation Should a new arena be built in the city of Pittsburgh? Stacy Monarkoa, et all. 2007 Hockey ANP Eecision analysis for building a new arena Using geoinformatics to identify suitable middle to long distance Athletics' rraining sites in Kenya John Kiema et al. 2007 Running GIS, AHP Selecting suitable training sites for endurance running AHP in political group decisions: A study in the art of possibilities Carlsson, C., Walden, P. 1995 Ice hockey AHP Finding the optimal location for a new ice-hockey arena Some applications of the analytic hierarchy process Vachnadze, R. G., Markozashvili, N. I. 1987 Relay race AHP Electing team members and their distribution for relay-race stages IJAHP Article: Nisel, Özdemir /AHP/ANP in sports: A comprehensive literature review International Journal of the Analytic Hierarchy Process 422 Vol. 8 Issue 3 2016 ISSN 1936-6744 http://dx.doi.org/10.13033/ijahp.v8i3. 448 4. Conclusion Sporting has become one of the fastest growing areas of industry and entertainment worldwide. In almost all competitive sports branches, it is obligatory to consider all success factors in order to be successful or to win the game. Developing tactical strategies and kicking styles, managing time wisely during a game, changing players in the proper period, tactical movements, making decisions quickly, selecting proper players for positions, and building a technical game structure, all require professional decision making abilities. Therefore, since the 1970’s, managers, professionals and fans have applied many statistical tools and models in order to analyze sports data systematically in many areas of sports. As a result of the comprehensive literature analysis, it was concluded that AHP and also ANP techniques were successfully used in many areas of sport such as football (or soccer), basketball, baseball, the Olympic Games, athletics, hockey, tennis, American football, badminton, cricket, physical training, archery, golf, judo, leisure sports, relay race, running, swimming, volleyball and water polo. The methods were used mainly for performance measurement, team or player evaluation and ranking, prediction of failure, coach evaluation, rule evaluation in a game, measuring technical efficiency, and for sports marketing. There has also been a significant increase in the number of AHP studies in the sports field especially in the last five years, and it is estimated that this trend will continue as more statistical data will be available for researchers, and the worldwide popularity of many sports branches will continue to grow. 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