PurposeFor managers of sports leagues, it is crucial to produce an attractive competition. For that to happen, it is vital to consider that leagues frequently have more sub-competitions than “just” the championship. In European top football leagues, for instance, four sub-competitions are common (championship, qualification for Champions- or Europa League, avoiding relegation). This paper introduces a new method for measuring competitive intensity (CI) in round-robin sports leagues considering all relevant sub-competitions and applies it to Germany's Bundesliga.Design/methodology/approachThe newly developed model calculates a CI-Index for each sub-competition and the league as a whole. The application to the Bundesliga analyzes its viability and the development of the league's CI over the past 22 seasons.FindingsThe newly introduced CI-Indices prove to be a viable tool for evaluating a league's competitive intensity. The application to the Bundesliga shows that the seasonal CI dropped after 2009/10, which can mainly be attributed to a decline in the championship's CI.Practical implicationsThe results show that it is important to facilitate a high CI in each of Bundesliga's four sub-competitions. Efforts have to be made to ensure that especially the Europa League remains as attractive as possible for the participating teams and their fans because this sub-competition constantly makes the greatest contribution to the seasonal CI.Originality/valueThe new method measures competitive intensity by quantifying the different sub-competitions and their contribution to the seasonal CI. This allows the organizers of sports leagues to assess the intensity of the individual sub-competitions as well as the league as a whole.

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Much has been written about the legacies of Olympic Games but there have been little efforts to synthesize current knowledge. This has led to inconsistencies in defining, contextualising and measuring these legacies. The literature review described in this paper provides an overview over research on the legacy of the Olympic Games from 1908 to 2016 that was published in peer-reviewed journals between 1984 and 2017.The analysis reveals a significant increase of literature dealing with Olympic legacy since 2008. It turns out that considerably more studies relate to the legacy of Summer Olympic Games than of Winter Games. Regarding the six different facets of legacy of the framework that was employed, 'urban development' and 'beliefs and behaviour' have been scrutinized much more often than the other four. Regarding the methodologies used in legacy studies there is a dominance of commentary articles and a lack of adequate empirical research. This leads to a number of implications for future studies, which are discussed in the paper.

This study perceives professional European football as one of the most relevant event-related entrepreneurial ecosystems (EEs) worldwide. It also identifies a healthy sporting competition in the five most popular European football leagues (Spain, England, Germany, Italy, and France), the “big five,” as a key pillar for the functioning of this ecosystem. By applying a quantitative approach, competitive intensity (CI) is measured for all big five leagues for 21 seasons (1998/99 to 2018/19). The chosen method does not only convey an overall indication of the competitive health of the entire league but also provides detailed information on the four important sub-competitions (championship race, qualification for Champions League or Europa League, and the fight against relegation). In all five leagues, seasonal CI tends to decrease over time, and especially over the last decade. The main reason is a decline in the intensity of the championship race while all other sub-competitions show relatively robust CI values. Overall, it can be concluded that the competitive health of the big five is intact, but the dwindling CI of the championship races can harm the EE of professional European football in the long run. Accordingly, it should be closely monitored in the future.