Is the Scottish Premier League less competitive than its English Counterpart?

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1. Introduction

In the brief ‘Measuring the competitiveness of sport: are the top teams getting too strong?’ it was noted that sporting competition needs some degree of unpredictability in order to sustain consumer interest. As a result, the governing bodies of some sports intervene openly in market processes to prevent strong teams from getting too strong and weaker teams from getting too weak. ????????????? The main aim of the aforementioned brief was to show how concentration ratios could be used to analyse changes in the degree of competitiveness within a sports league, with particular reference to the English Premier League.

In this paper we will look more closely at a complementary measure of league competitiveness: the Hirschman-Herfindahl Index. Unlike the concentration ratio, which focuses on the dominance of a fixed number of teams relative to the rest of the league in terms of points won, this measure is based on the relative distribution of points earned by all the teams over an individual season. Using a 25 year time frame, we will illustrate how this measure can be used to stimulate an analysis of competitiveness within the top tier of English and Scottish football.

2. Competitiveness in the top tier of Scottish and English Football

In Scottish football, Glasgow Celtic and Glasgow Rangers have been dominant. Over the last 25 years, there have only been three seasons when one of them has not been crowned as league champion: 1982/83 (Dundee United), 1983/84 (Aberdeen) and 1985/86 (Aberdeen).?? This pattern of dominance by the two Glasgow teams has characterised Scottish football all the way back to the 1890/91 season, when the league was first contested.?

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