| Competitive balance refers to the balance of the overall strength of each team in the professional sports league,which is mainly reflected as "outcome uncertainty".It is very important for the leagues’ quality and is the prerequisite for the symbiosis of professional sports leagues.As an important basic theory for the operation of Western professional sports,foreign scholars have done a lot of study on competitive balance,and the five major European leagues have also taken different measures to protect the interests of week teams.However,study done by Chinese scholars was stated relatively late on competitive balance of professional football leagues.In the past,most researches focused on external factors such as the football management and professionalization reform,and they paid less attention to the internal constraints of professional leagues.This research adopts the methods of literature analysis,expert interview and mathematical statistics etc.,combined with data of win-loss records and rankings from2010-2019 season(2400 games in total)to measure the competitive balance of the Chinese Super League in the past decade,and compare the competitive balance level of the La Liga during the same period,and learn from the outcome of competitive imbalance,make suggestions for improving competitive balance in the Chinese Super League.The main conclusions are as follows:1.The competitive balance of Chinese Super League measured by surprise index showed an overall downward trend during the 2010-2019 season,indicating that the strength gap has clearly increase between the various teams in the Chinese Super League.The probability of underdog-wins will gradually decrease,and the overall strength structure of the league will stabilize;2.By comparing the competitive balance between Chinese Super League and La Liga,it is found that the overall competitive balance of Chinese Super League in the past ten years is better than that of La Liga,but with the year-on-year downward trend of the Chinese Super League surprise index,its competitive balance has equaled or even lower than La Liga;compared with La Liga and Ligue 1,another obvious feature of Chinese Super League is the sharp fluctuation of the surprise index during the season;3.Exploring the main factors affecting the competitive balance of the Chinese Super League through expert interviews and sorting out from the perspective of different league stakeholders,facts can be found: from the aspect of league operation managers,the changes of league policies has led to fluctuation of the competitive balance of Chinese Super League;from the aspect of the league participants,the main factors are: the sole ownership structure of professional football clubs,differences in positioning and short-term speculation behavior of investors;from the aspect of league consumers,fans have different preferences on levels of competitive balance,and indirectly influence the league policies through feedback mechanisms;4.This study suggests that increased competitive imbalances will lead to survival crisis of small and medium clubs;limited opportunities for domestic players and obstacles on youth training;deterioration of the football ecological environment and culture.Therefore,on the basis of a rational understanding of the competitive balance of Chinese Super League,the interests of the major players should be fully respected in the process of formulating the league’s policy;the diverse ownership structure of clubs can be developed;and a new revenue distribution system can be applied to the league. |
