Competitive Balance

This chapter argues that an important reason for following sport is to participate in the uncertainty of a close contest. This is particularly important for league sports in which the long-term sustainability of leagues depends upon the degree of their competitive balance. This chapter examines the issue of how competitive balance should be measured against the backdrop of four T20 cricket leagues – the Indian Premier League, The Big Bash League, the Women’s Big Bash League, and the Kia Super League – where the first two pertain to men’s cricket and the last two to women’s cricket. The argument of this chapter is that insights provided by the methods of inequality analysis deepen our understanding of competitive balance and provide valuable insights into the implications of a lack of balance.