Seminar_LiamLenten,Department of Economics and Finance, La Trobe University

Titel: The Extent to Which Unbalanced Schedules Affect Reported Competitive Balance in the Scottish Premier League.

Abstract: Since the season ending in 2001, the Scottish Premier League (SPL) has, unlike other European football leagues, utilised an unbalanced schedule, by which the strongest teams in a given season play each other an extra time,
mutatis mutandis for the weakest teams. While this approach may sense for several reasons, it does also have implications for within-season measures of competitive balance (CB), not least of all because the set of win ratios calculated on the basis of the end-of-season league table are biased. This paper applies a relatively simple log-probability rule to calculate a set of adjusted win ratios correcting for this inherent bias. Such an adjustment is necessary if one wishes to compare within-season CB of the SPL to other European leagues. It is found that by correcting for the unbalanced schedule, measured CB in the SPL is consistently lower over the sample period. The implications of this finding are discussed at length.