IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/ebl/ecbull/eb-11-00609.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Measurement of competitive balance in professional team sports using the Normalized Concentration Ratio

Author

Listed:
  • Vasileios Manasis

    (University of Peloponnese)

  • Vassiliki Avgerinou

    (University of Peloponnese)

  • Ioannis Ntzoufras

    (Athens University of Economics and Business)

  • J. James Reade

    (University of Birmingham)

Abstract

Competitive balance is an important concept in professional team sports; its measurement is, therefore, a critical issue. One of the most widely used indices, which was introduced for the estimation of seasonal competitive balance is the Concentration Ratio, which is a relatively simple index and measures the extent to which a league is dominated by a particular number of teams. However, it is shown that both the total number of league teams and the number of dominant teams under examination affects the index's boundaries, which results in a misleading interpretation concerning the level of competitive balance. Thus, we introduce the Normalized Concentration Ratio for the study of competitive balance across leagues or seasons.

Suggested Citation

  • Vasileios Manasis & Vassiliki Avgerinou & Ioannis Ntzoufras & J. James Reade, 2011. "Measurement of competitive balance in professional team sports using the Normalized Concentration Ratio," Economics Bulletin, AccessEcon, vol. 31(3), pages 2529-2540.
    • Handle: RePEc:ebl:ecbull:eb-11-00609
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.accessecon.com/Pubs/EB/2011/Volume31/EB-11-V31-I3-P227.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Simon Rottenberg, 1956. "The Baseball Players' Labor Market," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 64(3), pages 242-242.
    2. Loek Groot, 2008. "Economics, Uncertainty and European Football," Books, Edward Elgar Publishing, number 12924.
    3. Joshua Utt & Rodney Fort, 2002. "Pitfalls to Measuring Competitive Balance With Gini Coefficients," Journal of Sports Economics, , vol. 3(4), pages 367-373, November.
    4. Craig Depken, 1999. "Free-Agency and the Competitiveness of Major League Baseball," Review of Industrial Organization, Springer;The Industrial Organization Society, vol. 14(3), pages 205-217, May.
    5. El-Hodiri, Mohamed & Quirk, James, 1971. "An Economic Model of a Professional Sports League," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 79(6), pages 1302-1319, Nov.-Dec..
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Dorian Owen, 2014. "Measurement of competitive balance and uncertainty of outcome," Chapters, in: John Goddard & Peter Sloane (ed.), Handbook on the Economics of Professional Football, chapter 3, pages 41-59, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    2. P. Dorian Owen & Nicholas King, 2015. "Competitive Balance Measures In Sports Leagues: The Effects Of Variation In Season Length," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 53(1), pages 731-744, January.
    3. repec:qut:auncer:2013_04 is not listed on IDEAS
    4. John Goddard & Peter Sloane (ed.), 2014. "Handbook on the Economics of Professional Football," Books, Edward Elgar Publishing, number 14821.
    5. James Reade, 2014. "Detecting corruption in football," Chapters, in: John Goddard & Peter Sloane (ed.), Handbook on the Economics of Professional Football, chapter 25, pages 419-446, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    6. Vasileios Manasis, 2022. "Measurement of competitive balance in professional team sports using the adjusted entropy," Economics Bulletin, AccessEcon, vol. 42(2), pages 1124-1134.
    7. Meletakos, Panagiotis & Chatzicharistos, Dimitrios & Apostolidis, Nikolaos & Manasis, Vasilios & Bayios, Ioannis, 2016. "Foreign players and competitive balance in Greek basketball and handball championships," Sport Management Review, Elsevier, vol. 19(4), pages 391-401.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Andrew Larsen & Aju J. Fenn & Erin Leanne Spenner, 2006. "The Impact of Free Agency and the Salary Cap on Competitive Balance in the National Football League," Journal of Sports Economics, , vol. 7(4), pages 374-390, November.
    2. Dorian Owen, 2014. "Measurement of competitive balance and uncertainty of outcome," Chapters, in: John Goddard & Peter Sloane (ed.), Handbook on the Economics of Professional Football, chapter 3, pages 41-59, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    3. Robert J. Lemke & Matthew Leonard & Kelebogile Tlhokwane, 2010. "Estimating Attendance at Major League Baseball Games for the 2007 Season," Journal of Sports Economics, , vol. 11(3), pages 316-348, June.
    4. Allen R. Sanderson & John J. Siegfried, 2003. "Thinking about Competitive Balance," Journal of Sports Economics, , vol. 4(4), pages 255-279, November.
    5. Meletakos, Panagiotis & Chatzicharistos, Dimitrios & Apostolidis, Nikolaos & Manasis, Vasilios & Bayios, Ioannis, 2016. "Foreign players and competitive balance in Greek basketball and handball championships," Sport Management Review, Elsevier, vol. 19(4), pages 391-401.
    6. András Gyimesi, 2020. "League Ranking Mobility Affects Attendance: Evidence From European Soccer Leagues," Journal of Sports Economics, , vol. 21(8), pages 808-828, December.
    7. Kelly Goossens, 2006. "Competitive balance in european football: comparison by adapting measures: national measure of seasonal imbalance and Top 3," Rivista di Diritto ed Economia dello Sport, Centro di diritto e business dello Sport, vol. 2(2), pages 77-122, Dicembre.
    8. Liam J. A. Lenten, 2015. "Measurement of Competitive Balance in Conference and Divisional Tournament Design," Journal of Sports Economics, , vol. 16(1), pages 3-25, January.
    9. Dubois, Marc, 2022. "Dominance criteria on grids for measuring competitive balance in sports leagues," Mathematical Social Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 115(C), pages 1-10.
    10. Daniel R. Marburger, 2002. "Property Rights and Unilateral Player Transfers in a Multiconference Sports League," Journal of Sports Economics, , vol. 3(2), pages 122-132, May.
    11. R. Alan Bowman & James Lambrinos & Thomas Ashman, 2013. "Competitive Balance in the Eyes of the Sports Fan," Journal of Sports Economics, , vol. 14(5), pages 498-520, October.
    12. Martin Schmidt, 2006. "On the evolution of competition: an application of nonlinear tests," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 38(1), pages 1-12.
    13. Jan Šíma & Jan Procházka, 2011. "Compared Competitive Balance Evolution in the Dutch and the Czech Football Leagues between 1970 and 2010," Ekonomika a Management, Prague University of Economics and Business, vol. 2011(2).
    14. Jean-pascal Gayant & Nicolas Le Pape, 2012. "How to account for changes in the size of Sports Leagues? The Iso Competitive Balance Curves," Economics Bulletin, AccessEcon, vol. 32(2), pages 1715-1723.
    15. Richard Evans, 2014. "A review of measures of competitive balance in the ‘analysis of competitive balance’ literature," Birkbeck Sports Business Centre Working Papers 9, Birkbeck College, Department of Management.
    16. Gyimesi, András, 2021. "Hosszú távú versenyegyensúly egy csapatsportliga közgazdasági modelljében [Long-term competitive balance in an economic model of a team sports league]," Közgazdasági Szemle (Economic Review - monthly of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences), Közgazdasági Szemle Alapítvány (Economic Review Foundation), vol. 0(6), pages 585-616.
    17. Hayley Jang & Young Hoon Lee & Rodney Fort, 2019. "Winning In Professional Team Sports: Historical Moments," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 57(1), pages 103-120, January.
    18. Franziska Prockl & Dirk Semmelroth, 2018. "Perception Versus Reality - Competitive Balance In Major League Soccer From 1996 – 2016," Working Papers Dissertations 36, Paderborn University, Faculty of Business Administration and Economics.
    19. Liam J. A. Lenten, 2017. "A Formal Test for Asymmetry in the Uncertainty of Outcome Hypothesis," Journal of Sports Economics, , vol. 18(3), pages 253-270, April.
    20. Daniel Mizak & Anthony Stair, 2004. "The relationship between payroll and performance disparity in major league baseball: an alternative measure," Economics Bulletin, AccessEcon, vol. 12(9), pages 1-14.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    competitive balance; concentration ratio; professional sports; sport league;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • C0 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - General
    • L0 - Industrial Organization - - General

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ebl:ecbull:eb-11-00609. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: John P. Conley (email available below). General contact details of provider: .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.