Talent concentration and competitive imbalance in European soccer.

ABSTRACT:

Introduction

While most of the available literature on competitive balance analyses its impact on ticket sales and TV audiences, less empirical research is available that examines the observable variation in competitive balance across leagues and over time. This paper studies the concentration of player talent and end-of-season league points to empirically assess whether leagues with a more equal distribution of player talent produce a more balanced competition than leagues with less equal distribution.

Methods

The longitudinal data we use to estimate our empirical model comes from professional soccer leagues in twelve Western European countries from 2005/06 thru 2020/21, yielding 5,299 club-season observations.

Results

Our empirical analysis indicates that talent con

SUBMITTER: Frick B 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC10097894 | biostudies-literature | 2023

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature