Rivista di Diritto ed Economia dello Sport - Rdes.it

118 Kelly Goossenschampionship titles. Figure 6 shows that Denmark is the most balanced one,followed by Sweden. Greece, the Netherlands and Portugal are the mostdominated countries. Belgium is in the middle. Of the big 5 Germany is theleast concentrated, followed closely by Italy. France is third. England andSpain have more dominant champions than the other big 5 countries.Even within the same group of competitive imbalance, championshipdominance, a good definition of the subject is essential. Considering the big5 a different picture appears when looking at the champions alone versusthe use of the number of teams entering the top 3. England shows a lowerbalance when champions are considered. So it is often the same team thatwins but the numbers two and three change more frequently. In Italy it israther the opposite: the same teams enter the top 3 but it is less certain whowill win. The calculation over a shorter period can be an amelioration of ourresearch to evaluate important changes over time considering the champions.The two groups found by the other two measures are present here. Portugal,Greece and the Netherlands are still most imbalanced but now less distinctive.4. Conclusions and future researchDifferent interpretations of the concept exist and therefore it is important todefine what is understood by the concept. We give attention to three possibleinterpretations of the concept: dispersion of winning percentages, dominanceof top 3 teams and dominance of champions. We compare the Europeandomestic football leagues for all three interpretations. Because the numberof teams differs between countries and over time, an international comparisonof competitive balance needs an adaptation of measures. For a comparisonwithin seasons we compare the actual standard deviation range to the maximalone. This makes sure that we have a measure ranging between 0 and 1 and,more importantly, it compares the actual spread of win percentages to theone that occurs when there is perfect imbalance. The latter is the worst casescenario by definition of team sports. So we prevent the use of an idealspread. 86 Between seasons we use the number of teams that enter the top 3over 5 years together with a discussion of the champions over the total timeperiod.The countries differ not only between each other but depending onthe chosen kind of competitive balance, different evolutions are also noted____________________86The concept of ‘ideal’ remains up for discussion and is probably not a good substitute for an‘optimal’ distribution so that, as discussed before, the results can not be interpreted as well asthey should.