How big should an international tournament be? In golf, up to 156 players contest the majors, while there are 128 in the first round of a tennis grand slam. Team sports are smaller: the football World Cup has 32 teams, the rugby union equivalent has 20. Getting the right balance is crucial to a tournament’s success. Too many participants yield a procession of one-sided matches, but too few could see the sport miss its chance to hog the limelight. The governing bodies in football and cricket are moving in opposite directions with their strategies for forthcoming tournaments. Consequently, we are about to see more European international football than ever and cricket fall further into the margins.

In football—the closest thing the world has to a global game—bigger is seen as better. The World Cup has ballooned in size, from an initial 13 sides, to 16, 24 and finally the globe-straddling 32-team behemoth that it is now. As the game has spread across Africa and Asia, the World Cup has grown to include new nations. But football is not only expanding into unfamiliar markets—its competitions are growing in areas where it is already the dominant sport. The much-maligned Europa League, the second-tier European club competition, has swelled from 126 matches 20 years ago, to 481 last season. The benefits of the expansion are obvious: more gate receipts for European clubs and more broadcasting revenue for the regional governing body, UEFA.

UEFA has also decided to expand the European Championships, a mini-World Cup that takes place every four years. Previously a tight and competitive 16-team tournament where almost every game matters, from 2016 the Euros will have 24 entrants. This expansion requires an extra 20 matches and a further knock-out round. The group stages will eliminate only eight teams. It will be a slog to get through for fans, if not for the teams. The bigger, baggier tournament has also dampened the excitement of the two-year series of qualifying matches. As almost 50% of UEFA’s 54 members will reach Euro 2016, England could finish as low as third in a very moderate qualifying group (of Switzerland, Slovenia, Estonia, Lithuania and San Marino), and still make the tournament. England fans are already voting with their feet: there were 35,000 empty seats at Wembley for the recent visit of San Marino.

For UEFA a bigger tournament makes sense. With an easier path to the finals, there is a smaller risk of one of its major teams failing to qualify, in the manner of England in 2008. (The level of interest in Euro 2008 in England was much reduced without the team involved.) It also opens up new advertising and broadcasting opportunities in countries who usually miss out on major tournaments. The initial proposers of the expansion were Iceland and Scotland, who have only qualified for two European Championships between them. UEFA’s president, Michel Platini, has said the expansion of the tournament is a victory for democracy, noting that 51 of the 54 members voted in favour. Notably, two of those that opposed were two of UEFA’s most influential nations: England and Germany.

Cricket’s biggest players, India, England and Australia, also oppose the expansion of their World Cup. But, unlike in football, these nations have sufficient clout to set the rules. The next Cricket World Cup, which takes place in Australia and New Zealand in February-March 2015, will feature 14 teams. These are the ten teams that play Test matches (known as “full members” of the global governing body, the International Cricket Council), and four “associate members”, who emerged from a qualifying tournament. In each of these countries—Ireland, Scotland, Afghanistan and the United Arab Emirates—the quality of cricket is rising sharply.

Yet even before the 2015 tournament has taken place, the ICC has decided that the 2019 tournament will feature only ten teams. These will be the eight highest-ranked full members and the winners of two play-offs between the ninth and tenth full members and the two best associates. The odds are weighted in favour of the full members: they play far more matches than the associates and they get home advantage. It would be a major upset if the 2019 tournament had any associate members at all. Given that Ireland thrashed England in the 2011 tournament (and the Netherlands gave the same team a huge fright), it seems a harsh step on those nations trying to grow their cricket communities. According to Tim Wigmore, an expert on associate cricket, “Contracting the World Cup is a grave threat to associates, limiting their fixtures against top teams, and their ability to generate sponsorship and funding from their governments. Ultimately it means that many talented players beyond the Test world will not deem a career in cricket viable”.

Although the ICC tends not to justify its decisions, the process behind this one is not hard to spot. At the 2007 event, India—the country on which the entire cricket world is increasingly dependent—fell at the group stage, losing to Bangladesh and Sri Lanka. It was an embarrassment to the Indian board, and cost tens of millions of dollars in lost advertising and broadcasting revenue. Since then, the Indian board has done everything it can to ensure that the team plays more matches. The 2019 tournament will have a round-robin format, guaranteeing that India will play a minimum of nine games, compared with three in 2007. Given that India, England and Australia succeeded in restructuring the ICC earlier this year to grant themselves more influence, the prospects for Ireland, Afghanistan and the other associates are grim.

Running a classic sporting tournament requires a confluence of factors—good weather, engaged fans, a decent performance from the hosts, a smattering of controversy, a few moments of awe-inspiring skill and some wider cultural resonance—and guaranteeing most of these is outside of the organisers’ control. But the framework of the tournament is still fundamental, and tournaments themselves are still crucial to how the public perceive a sport. Part of the success of football, in Europe at least, is its ubiquity. There are more opportunities to consume football than ever before. Yet stadiums are full (96% of seats in the English Premier League were taken in 2013/14) and the value of broadcasting rights and sponsorship deals is rising. For UEFA the challenge is to ensure that this familiarity does not lead to boredom or a fall in quality. But for the organisers of every other sport, competition for attention is fierce. The ICC’s approach, of stunting growth in new markets, is surely wrong.