The lack of balance in the Spanish First Division football league

Abstract

Research question: The importance of balance in sports competitions has been made evident on many occasions. The dominance of a few teams over the rest of the participants in the Spanish First Division Football League has made the subject of a lack of balance an omnipresent one in sports journalism. The aim of this article is to show that the lack of balance is not just a matter of the past few seasons, but also it has been evidenced since far back in time. To test this hypothesis, the results of the league have been analyzed since its inception through various static and dynamic indices of competitive balance.Research methods: The empirical distribution of static and dynamic indices under the hypothesis of perfect balance were obtained by means of a simulation procedure. A Montecarlo test is used to contrast the hypothesis of balance in each season. The performance of this test is also evaluated.Results and findings: Both the static and the dynamic analyses confirm the competitive imbalance in the First Division league practically since its beginnings, with the occasional exception which does not invalidate this statement.Implications: The imbalance influences the low attendance at the stadiums. The Spanish league managers must contrive some measures to reduce this imbalance. The first of them should be a fairer distribution of TV rights since with the current system the ratio between the highest and lowest receivers is 12 to 1 while in the other European leagues it does not exceed 2 to 1.