Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/49289 
Year of Publication: 
2005
Series/Report no.: 
Hamburg Contemporary Economic Discussions No. 01/2005
Publisher: 
University of Hamburg, Faculty of Business, Economics and Social Sciences, Chair for Economic Policy, Hamburg
Abstract: 
The concept of competitive balance is a central aspect in the literature of sports economics. A popular argumentation of sport functionaries is that dominance of one or a few teams could lead to unequal incomes for the clubs, restrictions in the clubs' ability to improve sporting performance and ultimately to a loss of attractiveness and loss of income for the league. Following this line of reasoning and alleging a negative trend in competitive sports functionaries often try to implement regulations in team sport leagues. The aim of this paper is to analyze for eight different leagues if there is such a trend existing. For an empirical test for trends in competitive balance of four European soccer leagues (ENG, ESP, GER, ITA) and four US Major Leagues (MLB, NBA, NFL, NHL), OLS regressions with a constant were carried out. For the entire observation period from 1969/70 to 2003/2004, of 48 trends ascertained, only 12 could be observed as being significantly positive (i.e. growing imbalance) with 19 significantly negative (i.e. growing balance). The remaining 17 trends were insignificantly different from zero.
Subjects: 
Competitive Balance
Sports Economics
Team Sport Leagues
Trend
JEL: 
L83
C22
ISBN: 
978-3-940369-01-7
Document Type: 
Working Paper

Files in This Item:
File
Size
640.69 kB





Items in EconStor are protected by copyright, with all rights reserved, unless otherwise indicated.