Readme file for
Garcia-del-Barrio, P., & Reade, J. J. (2024). "Talent allocation in European football leagues: why competitive imbalance may be optimal?". Jahrbücher für Nationalökonomie und Statistik, 244(5-6), 631-670.
Content
The provided content consists of two files:
- The "data" file (with the dataset)
- The "do" file (with the estimations).
Summary
Based on a simple model, the paper empirically examines some major sources of interest that fans show in sport events, such as:
(i) degree of competitive balance that determines the uncertainty of the outcome
(ii) concentration of gifted players in a team, whose interaction of talents on the field enhances the quality of the ‘product joint’ that is a sporting event
(iii) joint aggregate quality of rival teams.
The argument of the paper relies on the idea that overall quality of a sport event encompasses more than the mere sum of individual talents. Our empirical analyses show that certain degree of talent imbalance between rival teams seems to be better than a perfect competitive balance – to broaden the interest of fans on the sport events and, thus, maximise economic outcomes. Disaggregate estimations reveal discrepancies across football domestic leagues.
Requirements
STATA to perform the following tasks:
- Obtain the summary statistics of the main variables
- Compute the estimations and regression analyses
- Produce the tables (reported in Appendix A and Appendix B of the paper).
Estimating the models
To run the "do" file, you must first modify the initial line to tell the location path of the "dataset" file.
Then, the code is organised to deliver, in due order, the estimations of all the tables reported in Appendix A:
Then, the results and calculations of the tables in the main body of the paper are calculated, based on the information found on these tables. The final part of the "do" file produces the estimations of the table in Appendix B:
- APPENDIX B: Descriptive Statistics of the Main Variables (Pair of Teams) - By Season and League
Variables description and sources
- Revenues: Sum of annual revenue of pairs of rival clubs in each season (Source: Deloitte Annual Review of Football Finance (ARFF, 2005-2021); Deloitte Football Money League
(FML, 1999-2021); Official clubs’ account for some clubs of the Ligue 1 and Serie A).
- Salaries: Sum of annual wages of pairs of rival clubs in each season (Source: Deloitte Annual Review of Football Finance (ARFF, 2005-2021); Deloitte Football Money League
(FML, 1999-2021); Official clubs’ account for some clubs of the Ligue 1 and Serie A).
- Points: Sum of points in domestic football leagues by every pair of rival teams at the end of the season (Source: Official websites of the domestic leagues; and www.transfermarkt.de).
- Rounds in UEFA Champions League: Sum of the number of qualifying rounds that every pair of rival teams reached in the UEFA Champions every season (Source: Official website of the Union of European Football Associations).
- Rounds in UEFA Europa League: Sum of the number of qualifying rounds that every pair of rival teams reached in the UEFA Europa every season (Source: Official website of the Union of European Football Associations).
- Media Visibility: index of the combined visibility of every pair of rival teams in each season (Source: Authors' own calculations following the approach described at: www.meritsocialvalue.com).
- Elo rating: Sum of Elo ratings for every pair of rival teams in each season (Source: Football Club Elo Ratings http://clubelo.com/).
Corrigendum
In Tables 7 and 8 there are some typographical errors, which are obvious with a simple inspection of the tables in the Appendices: the figures for the filtered MVI and the filtered Elo have been mistakenly swapped.
Contact
For any reamining questions, please contact me via pgbarrio@unav.es
