Competitive balance is a matter of great interest among sports fans, researchers, and stakeholders. As a result, several competing metrics have been put forth by researchers. Most commonly, these measures examine variation in wins or championships ex-post. In contrast, this study uses ex-ante championship probabilities from the futures betting market to measure competitive balance in the NBA, NFL, NHL, and MLB. Uncertainty of outcome is a component of fan interest, and at this point, the literature has used betting markets to examine uncertainty for individual games. This study proposes a measure for uncertainty in the outcome of a team's season.
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