Measuring Competitive Balance in Sports using Generalised Entropy with an Application to English Premier League Football

Vani Borooah and John Edward Mangan ()
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John Edward Mangan: Economics - UQ [All campuses : Brisbane, Dutton Park Gatton, Herston, St Lucia and other locations] - The University of Queensland

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Abstract: A central issue in the economics of sport is the degree of competitive balance in sporting contests. The importance attached to competitive balance is predicated on the belief is that it is uncertainty about the outcomes of sporting contests that attracts spectators and sponsors. In a perfectly balanced competition, each team would have an equal chance of winning every match and, therefore, of winning the championship or the league. By contrast, the absence of competitive balance would mean that the results of sporting contests would become predictable and attendance at sporting contests would suffer. The general theme that underpins the issue of competitive balance is that of inequality. This paper proposes a general measure of competitive balance based on the based on the Generalised Entropy approach to measuring inequality and shows how this might be interpreted in terms of the league's welfare. The measures are applied to results from the 2006-07 season of the English Premier League.

Keywords: Social; Sciences; &; Humanities (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2011-02-06
Note: View the original document on HAL open archive server: https://hal.science/hal-00666678
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Published in Applied Economics, 2011, pp.1. ⟨10.1080/00036846.2010.537638⟩

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Journal Article: Measuring competitive balance in sports using generalized entropy with an application to English premier league football (2012)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hal:journl:hal-00666678

DOI: 10.1080/00036846.2010.537638

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