Analysis of the Level of Competitive Balance in the Russian Premier League Compared to Leading European Football Leagues

This article is devoted to examining the level of competition in the Russian Premier League (foot-ball) in comparison with the European football leagues comprising the Top 5 positions in the UEFA National Asso-ciation Rankings. Within the framework of this study, a comprehensive approach for analyzing the league’s com-petitive balance is proposed, which enables the measurement of competition both in a particular season and across multiple seasons. Furthermore, the approach takes into account the varying competitive motivations of teams oc-cupying different positions in the league table. The proposed methodology has been employed to calculate average competitive balance indicators for the Russian Premier League and the Top 5 European football leagues over the past five years. Analysis of the resulting data facilitated an assessment of the extent to which the Russian Premier League approaches the leading European leagues in terms of competitive balance. In addition, this assessment allowed for the identification of key directions for improvement in the strategic management of the league’s com-petitive balance. Potentially, the proposed approach can be used to make various strategic decisions in order to manage of the level of competition in Russian Premier League.