WHO MADE WHO? AN EMPIRICAL ANALYSIS OF COMPETITIVE BALANCE IN EUROPEAN SOCCER LEAGUES

摘要

The purpose of this paper was to analyze the relationship between competitive balance and fan attendance in professional European Soccer. In particular, we discussed why an ex-ante decision on the exogeneity and endogeneity of the variables mightrnnot be as obvious as the theory of competitive balance assumes. This motivated us to apply a VAK estimation methodology, where this ex-ante decision can be omitted. Based on the resulting estimation coefficients, we then performed tests for Granger causality. Our results clearly show a heterogeneous pattern in the relationship between fan attendance and competitive balance, first, across countries and, second, across tiers within the same country: For the German Bundesliga, our results indicate a significant influence from fan attendance to competitive balance but not vice versa; increases in fan attendance lower competitive balance in the subsequent season. However, this effect is only significant on a 10% level of significance. In comparison to that, we do not find any significant relationship between competitive balance and fan attendance. This is also true for the Italian Serie A. For the French league, we find that changes in fan demand improve competitive balance afterwards and that fan attendance reacts to changes in competitive balance. Thus, there are significant differences across countries with respect to the relationship between competitive balance and fan attendance.