infonet-economy

The article presents an empirical analysis of the relationship between competitive balance and fan attendance in European Soccer Leagues. Seasonal average match attendance data in professional German, English, Italian and French football during the season 1963-1964 to 2005-2006 formed the basis of the empirical results. A dominating approach among researchers in measuring seasonal competitive balance is the idealized standard deviation of winning percentages and one reason for this is the measure's simplicity. Drawbacks of measuring competitive balance using the said approach has been pointed out by Michie and Oughton and this has been addressed by Cain and Haddock by proposing a different procedure.