FEATURE SERIES: The Fair & The Just - Football Leagues That Matter - Part Two

In this excerpt of the second part of a mini-series ahead of the World Cup, available in full to subscribers on Patreon, the team look at the most egalitarian football leagues on the planet. The full episode is available on the World Cup Football Etc/World Sports Etc Patreon page: 

https://tinyurl.com/FriendsofWorldSportsetcPatreon

Transcript

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Welcome, etc.

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Hello and welcome to World Cup Football, etc., with me, Paul Schmitroschke. As per usual by now, in today's Monday episode, you will listen to a preview on our second episode in our current three-part mini-series called The Fair and the Just Football Leagues That Matter, available in full length on our Friends of World Sports etc. Patreon page. In this series, we are exploring which football leagues all over the world qualify as the most egalitarian ones. Enjoy it. But before I reveal the two leagues who sit at the top of that ranking, let's revisit what exactly we are measuring for in terms of egalitarianism. For sports scientists and football economists, it essentially boils down to one phrase: competitive balance. We are looking at how evenly distributed the points, wins, and financial power are across an entire table. Economists attract this using the Gini coefficient, where zero represents perfect equality, meaning every team is exactly as strong as the other, and one represents absolute inequality. We also look at champions diversification, which measures how many different teams actually lived the trophy over a decade. True egalitarianism means genuine unpredictability. It means the team fighting relegation this year has a structural chance to contend for the title in a few years from now without needing a billionaire to make it happen. While Europe's biggest leagues often resemble rigid financial oligarchies, several leagues across the globe have engineered mechanisms to level the playing field. Here are the spots two and one in our ranking. And the silver medal goes to the A-League men in Australia of all places. Down under, passionate football lovers figured out a way to make their first football division fair and just. But first, let's see how the league is structured in regards to its model of competition. The A-League men in Australia, consisting of 13 teams, is a closed franchise system with no promotion or relegation. After a 26-round regular season, the team that finishes at the very top of the ladder is crowned the Premier. Once the regular season concludes, the focus shifts to the final series, a high-intensity knockout tournament involving the top six teams of which the winner is then crowned the official champion of Australia. When Australian football was completely rebuilt in the year 2004, the sport was in a very bad place. The old league, called the National Soccer League or NSL for short, had slowly fallen apart because many clubs were spending way too much money and therefore going bankrupt. The people in charge had to start completely from scratch to save the sport. They rejected the traditional European system of promotion and relegation, and instead the newly formed Football Federation Australia decided to create a closed league which was heavily inspired by major American sports. The main tool used to make the league equal was a strict and simple salary cap. The goal was simple but necessary. Stop clubs from spending themselves into ruin just to win a trophy. Frank Lowy, who erroneously was also responsible for the downfall of the old NSL, also had a major role in the launch of the new league and wanted a system that focused on long-term financial survival rather than quick success on the field. By putting a hard limit of 2.3 million Australian dollars on what teams can spend on player wages, the A-League makes sure that no single club can simply buy their way to the top year after year. The salary cap basically pulls the richest teams down to the exact level that the poorest teams can comfortably afford. Although by now three exceptions to the salary cap were introduced with different specifications, the result of this financial rule created an amazing competitive balance across the whole country. The gap in points between the top team and the bottom team is usually quite small when the season ends. And because of that, the A-League has a constantly changing group of champions. And the staggering amount of nine different teams winning the championship since 2005 is proof that almost every fan base gets a real chance to see their team fight for the title at some point. So that's it from us for today.

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And if you just can't get enough of us, you can support us and get access to our premium content on Patreon, consisting of special interviews, deep dives, and QA's. You will find the link to our Friends of the World Sports etc. Patreon page in the show notes.

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And of course, don't forget to follow us and rate the show on all platforms. Your support is much appreciated.

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Also check out our World Sports, etc. podcast for more sports news and stories. And with that, thank you so much for listening and goodbye.