An empirical test of the effectiveness of adjusted gini coefficients as a measure of competitive balance in professional basketball

Date

2012-12

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Abstract

Competitive balance has long been studied under sports economics. There have been several ways to quantify how competitive a sports league is, such as the HHI of first place finishers and the standard deviation in winning percentage.

Gini coefficients have been a popular measure of competitive balance, but it has it's flaws. Due to the fact that even in the most unbalanced league, it is impossible for one team to win every league game in a league year due to scheduling. Therefor a new upper bound must be calculated for the hypothetical most uneven distribution of wins in a league year.

The purpose of this study is to examine how these adjusted Gini coefficients are at explaining observed variations in NBA attendance.

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Keywords

Competitive balance, Sports economics, National Basketball Association (NBA) attendance, Gini coefficients, Adjusted Gini coefficients, Standard deviation in winning percentage, Competitive balance ratio

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