Who Made Who – An Empirical Analysis of Competitive Balance in European Soccer Leagues

There is an on-going debate about the optimal degree of team solidarity in professional European soccer leagues. Support for a high degree of team solidarity has been coming from the theory of competitive balance, which states that diminished uncertainty of outcome will result in reduced attendance demand. Based on seasonal average match attendance and different measures of competitive balance for several soccer leagues in Europe, this paper presents empirical evidence from vector autoregressive models and Granger causality tests. The results clearly show the existence of heterogeneity across different leagues and for tiers within a league.