Competitive Balance in Men's and Women's Basketball: The Cast of the Missouri Valley Conference

Abstract: Competitive balance typically fosters fan interest. Since revenue associated with men's sports is typically greater than with women's, one might expect to find greater levels of competitive balance in men's sport than women's sport. The purpose of this research was to test this hypothesis by comparing the competitive balance in a high revenue intercollegiate sport, basketball, for both men and women over a 10-year period in the Missouri Valley Conference. Three measures of competitive balance were employed. In each case, competitive balance was found to be greater among the men's teams than the women's. The findings support the hypothesis that where there is greater revenue potential, there should be greater competitive balance. Introduction: One of the important differences between sports organizations and other industrial organizations is the issue of competitive balance. Whereas most industrial enterprises attempt to keep competition to a minimum, a lack of competition in the case of sport teams makes for boring games and ultimately fans lose interest (Depken & Wilson, 2006; El Hodiri & Quirk, 1971; Kesenne, 2006; Quirk & Fort, 1992; Sanderson & Siegfried, 2003). This lack of interest would lead to a loss of revenue, as fewer fans would attend games or listen to or watch media presentations. While fans certainly prefer to see their teams win, they want them to at least have a chance of losing. Economists refer to this as the uncertainty of outcome hypothesis (Leeds & Von Allmen, 2005). In professional sports some teams, frequently those in large markets, normally receive more revenue than their competitors. Those teams are in a position to sign better players and win more frequently, leading to the problem of competitive imbalance. Efforts to alleviate this problem have included salary caps, luxury taxes, revenue sharing, and reverse order of finish drafts. In intercollegiate athletics, attempts to alleviate competitive imbalance are undertaken by the NCAA through its various rules and regulations (National Collegiate Athletics Association, 2006). Likewise, various intercollegiate athletic conferences do this through budgeting and scheduling requirements and the selection of institutional membership (Rhoads, 2004). In order to maintain fan interest, competitive balance is important in all sports. From the viewpoint of program administrators, it would appear to be particularly important in sports such as basketball and football, in which there are potentially large sources of revenue involved. Similarly, because revenue is typically so much greater for men's than for women's sports, one might expect to find greater efforts being made to bring about competitive balance in men's sports than in sports for women. This might be singularly true where there was a post-season tournament, thus a need to keep fan interest intense throughout the season to help insure interest for post-season play. The purpose of this study is to test the hypothesis that one would expect to find more competitive balance in men's than in women's basketball. More specifically, the researchers compared the degree of competitive balance in both men's and women's basketball in the Missouri Valley Conference (MVC) for the 10-year period 1996-97 through 2005-06. The MVC was selected because it annually holds a post-season tournament, and the authors had access to financial data indicating that there was significantly larger revenue associated with men's basketball than women's basketball (Missouri Valley Conference, 2006a). The particular time frame was selected as a period of stable membership within the conference. The Missouri Valley Conference Established in 1907 as the Missouri Valley Intercollegiate Athletic Association, the MVC is the oldest collegiate athletic conference west of the Mississippi River and the fourth oldest league in the nation (Markus, 1982). …