A Review of Competitive Balance in European Football Leagues before and after Financial Fair Play Regulations
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
Dear authors,
this review concerns the paper entitled "A review of competitive balance of European football leagues before and after Financial Fair Play regulations"
The purpose of the paper is basically to analyse to what extent the implementation of UEFA's FFP regulation has affected the competitive balance of 24 European leagues. Although the topic is of interest, this paper does not make a significant contribution to the previous literature. The authors themselves state that the main differences are an increase in the sample and years of study.
The results seem to indicate that FFP has led to a weakening of the competitive balance in some leagues but there is really no evidence that this is a causal relationship or may be due to other elements as the authors themselves point out at the end of the penultimate paragraph on page 13. In particular it is strange that the Premier League has not experienced a decline in competitive balance unlike the other 4 big leagues. This could be related to the revenue generating capacity of the clubs and in particular to the sale and distribution of TV rights.
Some concrete issues that would contribute to strengthening the study are as follows:
1.- At the end of the introduction section (page 2) it would be advisable to justify why you want to analyse the competitive balance . What is the value of studying the competitive balance and who might be interested in it?
2.- A more detailed description of the method of calculating the HICB score and HHI would be needed in the Measurements paragraph of the Methods section (page 8). An illustrative example would be welcome.
3.- The results show that some leagues see their competitive balance modified after the entry into force of FFP while others do not. In this sense, it would be an interesting contribution to the previous literature to try to explain the causes of this different behaviour.
4.- The discussion section would do well to draw on other studies that analyse the impact on the situation of clubs of the introduction of FFP regulations beyond the competitive balance. In this sense, Urdaneta-Camacho, R.; Guevara-Pérez, J.C.; Martín Vallespín, E.; Le Clech, N. The Other Side of the "League of Stars": Analysis of the Financial Situation of Spanish Football. Int. J. Financial Stud. 2023, 11, 3. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijfs11010003
5.- The study lacks a Conclusions section. It would be necessary to separate the conclusions and proposals for further research from the discussion.
6.- On page 12, you state that "Of course, we argue that prize money from UEFA competitions should be considered a casual factor influencing our results", but for consistency with the argument you suggest the relationship should be causal.
Author Response
Thank you for reviewing our paper. We have provided a point-by-point response to your comments below and revised the manuscript accordingly using red font.
1.- At the end of the introduction section (page 2) it would be advisable to justify why you want to analyse the competitive balance . What is the value of studying the competitive balance and who might be interested in it?
Authors' response: Further justification for the study has been added at the end of the introduction.
2.- A more detailed description of the method of calculating the HICB score and HHI would be needed in the Measurements paragraph of the Methods section (page 8). An illustrative example would be welcome.
Authors' response: A worked example has been added to the methods.
3.- The results show that some leagues see their competitive balance modified after the entry into force of FFP while others do not. In this sense, it would be an interesting contribution to the previous literature to try to explain the causes of this different behaviour.
Authors' response: We have attempted to position our findings relative to previous research in the discussion. Because our findings are indicative and we cannot confirm a direct cause and effect relationship, it then becomes difficult to pinpoint why different behaviours are observed. However, in the discussion we have suggested that prize money from UEFA competitions is a plausible factor that influences our results.
4.- The discussion section would do well to draw on other studies that analyse the impact on the situation of clubs of the introduction of FFP regulations beyond the competitive balance. In this sense, Urdaneta-Camacho, R.; Guevara-Pérez, J.C.; Martín Vallespín, E.; Le Clech, N. The Other Side of the "League of Stars": Analysis of the Financial Situation of Spanish Football. Int. J. Financial Stud. 2023, 11, 3. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijfs11010003
Authors' response: We have added some narrative in the discussion to address this comment.
5.- The study lacks a Conclusions section. It would be necessary to separate the conclusions and proposals for further research from the discussion.
Authors' response: The conclusions and suggestions for future research have now been separated from the discussion section.
6.- On page 12, you state that "Of course, we argue that prize money from UEFA competitions should be considered a casual factor influencing our results", but for consistency with the argument you suggest the relationship should be causal.
Authors' response: The sentence has now been corrected for accuracy.
Reviewer 2 Report
Article Review
January 28th, 2023
Relevance / Importance of Topic
The research paper “A review of competitive balance in European football leagues before and after Financial Fair Play regulations" is an interesting topic however, some research in the area has been done before. Quote " Our study updates and extends the work of Plumley et al. (2018), who analyzed the state of competitive balance using recognized measures of league concentration and dominance in selected top-division football leagues in Europe before and after the implementation of FFP regulations". At the moment, adding more leagues showed almost the same results. To make this research relevant, I would suggest focusing on 3-5 leagues and studying the problem from the stakeholders' perspective. In-depth interviews with owners, players, and administrators, would add more relevance.
Author Response
Thank you for reviewing our paper. Previous literature on the topic of competitive balance in relation to Financial Fair Play (FFP) regulations is relatively scarce. To our knowledge there are only two previous studies that have investigated the impact of FFP on competitive balance in European football (one of which was published while our manuscript was in preparation). Our paper provides an extension of these studies by considering more leagues and covering more seasons. For any research where the knowledge base is not developed sufficiently, it is premature to pre-empt the findings before the data is collected and analysed properly. While our results confirm some of the findings from the scant previous research, they also provide some contrasting results as well as new insights (as we have noted in the discussion). We strongly feel that our paper makes a genuine and incremental contribution to the literature in its current guise. We note your suggestion of conducting qualitative research with a sample of stakeholders, but this was never the purpose of our study and we are not in a position to undertake further data collection of this type. We have suggested this as a potential area for future research in the revised version of the paper.
Round 2
Reviewer 1 Report
The authors have attended appropiately comments suggested in the first round of revision.
Nevertheless, I would recommend a better presentation of the conclusions identifying the main contributions of the paper and recommendations of authors to improve competitive balance at the same time that assure financial control of clubs
Reviewer 2 Report
I would advice a slight grammar and sentence structure check, otherwise, I would suggest acceptance.
