Competitive intensity and industry performance of professional sports

This paper discusses if an unbalanced league can lead to higher total revenues from attendance than a balanced league even though, theoretically, one expects the latter to be more attractive. At this aim, a new Bayesian statistical modelling is proposed, such as to explore the influence of the competitive structure on the attractiveness of men's soccer top leagues By investigating French and English top leagues covering the seasons 2016-17 and 2017-18, we found that French attendance is positively correlated with competitive balance, whereas English attendance have a higher preference for the presence of star players. Furthermore, the attractiveness of matches is higher in each of the two leagues when the league is structured as an oligopoly, but for different reasons: (i) French attendance is higher for teams qualifying for inter-country competitions; (ii) English attendance is higher for matches between the six historical clubs of the Premier League.