Assessing alternative competitive balance measures for sports leagues: a theoretical examination of standard deviations, gini coefficients, & the index of dissimilarity

This note provides a theoretical analysis of the use of standard deviations, Gini coefficients, and the Index of Dissimilarity to assess competitive balance in sports leagues. Limitations are identified for all three techniques. Each of these techniques is found to be affected by the introduction of more teams, unbalanced schedules, and inter-league play.