Competitive Balance Analysis of European Football (Example of 2018-2019 Season)

Abstract

When competitive equilibrium is defined as the power of teams to fight against each other, determining the power equilibrium of teams in any league is important for the quality and popularity of that league. Football is one of the most popular sports branches. The continuation of the attraction of football and its increasing visibility is directly related to the uncertainty of the match results. This study aims to determine the competitive balanceequilibrium level of the leading leagues of European football leagues. These are the Sport Toto Super League (Turkey), Bundesliga (Germany), La Liga (Spain), Ligue 1 (France) Premier League (England), Eredivisie (Netherlands), Premier League (Portugal) and Seria A (Italy). The data required to achieve this goal and measure the competitive balance level of the leagues were obtained by using the scanning model and document analysis method. The data were taken from the mackolik site, which includes many branches of world sports and especially the statistical information of many international leagues in football. This study has a descriptive research model. In order to measure the competitive equilibrium level of these leagues, scanning model was used and document analysis method was used. In the document analysis, C5 index, Lorenz Curve and Gini Coefficient were used to measure competitive equilibrium by using the 2018-2019 seasonal tables. As a result of the research, the league closest to the competitive equilibrium according to C5 index and Gini values is the Sport Toto Super League (Turkey) (0.31) among the leagues with 18 teams, followed by Bundesliga (Germany) (0.45), Eredivisie (Netherlands) (0.46), and Premier League (Portugal) (0.48). In the leagues with 20 teams, the most competitive league was La Liga (Spain) (0.34), Ligue 1 (France) (0.35), Seria A (Italy) (0.36) and Premier League (England) (0.38). According to these results, a course away from competitive equilibrium has emerged in the biggest leagues of Europe.