  Multi-stage tournaments consisting of a round-robin group stage followed by a
knockout phase are ubiquitous in sports. However, this format is incentive
incompatible if at least two teams from a group advance to the knockout stage
where the brackets are predetermined. A model is developed to quantify the risk
of tanking in these contests. The suggested approach is applied to the 2022
FIFA World Cup to uncover how its design could have been improved by changing
group labelling (a reform that has received no attention before) and the
schedule of group matches. Scheduling is found to be a surprisingly weak
intervention compared to previous results on the risk of collusion in a group.
The probability of tanking, which is disturbingly high around 25\%, cannot be
reduced by more than 3 percentage points via these policies. Tournament
organisers need to consider more fundamental changes against tanking.
