Domestic League Competitive Balance and UEFA Performance

Abstract

This paper investigates the relationship between European football league competitive balance and the performance of that league’s participants in UEFA competitions. The evidence suggests that competitive balance measured using performance points fits the performance coefficients of countries participating in the Champions League and Europa League and that a reciprocal model fits the data best. The evidence suggests that marginal improvements in competitive balance can lead to increase of one-third a win for a league’s participants in the Champions League. The increased rewards for UEFA success suggest policies that promote competitive balance have both public and private benefits for clubs.

Domestic Competitive Imbalance as the “Price” of Surprise in the Champions League

“…In contrast, Dessus and Raballand (2020), Plumley and Flint (2015), Szymanski (2007), Pawlowski et al (2010), andPeeters (2011) concur the CL's remuneration system offers clubs a large initial advantage over domestic-only-teams. Moreover, this financial disadvantage seems untenable to the other teams in the long term, forcing them to slash their budgets (Dessus & Raballand, 2020).…”

“…Fűrész and Ács (2020) interpret the findings with the following point of view: a better national team performance increases the prestige of the given domestic league, thus, increasing the number of star athletes, and this attractiveness and appeal leads to improved CB. Depken and Globan (2021) could manifest the reverse relationship by enhancing the former results. The authors constructed a new performance coefficient that mainly follows the UEFA country coefficient methodology yet handles the CL and EL success separately.…”

“…According to Depken and Globan (2021), the relationship between the domestic and continental club competition raises the need for more accurate regulations toward improving the CB, regardless of whether they belong to a specific league or UEFA. Since the prize money increases as a team can complete more rounds in the CL/EL, and better CB improves CL/EL performance, policies that strengthen CB provide additional private benefits to the domestic participants in CL/EL.…”

On the control of competitive balance in the major European football leagues

“…Data are in the 1000s. The study of the relationship between this variable and competitive balance is very prolific (García & Rodríguez, 2002; Peeters, 2011; Sung & Mills, 2018; among many others). Scelles et al (2022) analyse the determinants of local stadium attendance in European men's club football; in addition, Scelles et al (2022) introduce this variable with a lag as an explanatory variable for competitive balance.…”

“…Data are in the 1000s. The study of the relationship between this variable and competitive balance is very prolific (García & Rodríguez, 2002;Peeters, 2011;Sung & Mills, 2018; among many others). Scelles et al (2022) (Peeters & Szymanski, 2014;Scelles et al, 2022;UEFA, 2018).…”