Gender Inequality in European Football: Evidence from Competitive Balance and Competitive Intensity in the UEFA Men’s and Women’s Champions League
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
The paper focuses on the evolution of intra-match competitive balance (IMCB) and competitive intensity (IMCI) in the UEFA Men’s and Women’s Champions League (UMCL and UWCL). I have read the complete paper and I hold the following observation on it.
- The paper is well written. Although the presentation and the proofreading could be further improved.
- Perhaps more explanation or review of the existing literature could be added for each hypothesis or move the hypothesis in the literature review, as the critical review of the literature needs to be linked to the identified gaps and the formulated hypotheses.
- Methodology needs to be further improved. For instance, the authors tested the impact of the transition from a group stage to home-and-away knockout games in the round of 32 with more teams from the highest ranked associations. Although limited explanation are presented as tables' description, but , it is not clear what estimation strategies have been used to analyse data or test the impact. More explanation on the chosen statistical method and the logic behind the method selection is needed, and should be added within the main text.
- It would be important to see some robustness/sensitivity checks beyond what the authors have done. Has any robustness check been done to confirm the validity of the findings?
I wish you the best of luck.
Author Response
Dear Editor and Reviewers,
We want to thank you for the constructive and positive feedback provided.
We trust our response to your comments are convincing and, as such, contribute to improve the manuscript overall.
Please find below our responses in bold for each of the suggestions you have given us.
We hope they are satisfactory.
Revisions are visible in track changes in the manuscript.
We look forward to hearing back from you.
Best wishes,
The Authors
Reviewer 1
The paper focuses on the evolution of intra-match competitive balance (IMCB) and competitive intensity (IMCI) in the UEFA Men’s and Women’s Champions League (UMCL and UWCL). I have read the complete paper and I hold the following observation on it.
- The paper is well written. Although the presentation and the proofreading could be further improved.
We thank the reviewer for their positive feedback about the writing.
In relation to presentation and proofreading, we have read our paper carefully and adapted accordingly, as evidenced by the use of track changes throughout the paper.
- Perhaps more explanation or review of the existing literature could be added for each hypothesis or move the hypothesis in the literature review, as the critical review of the literature needs to be linked to the identified gaps and the formulated hypotheses.
We have made the link between our hypotheses and the literature more explicit in the revised version of the manuscript.
This is visible in the first sentence of the hypotheses subsection, as well as the addition of the specific determinants of CB and CI (identified previously in the literature) involved for the different hypotheses.
Besides, the determinant ‘identity of the teams in the competition’ is linked to the distribution of talent across countries and clubs. We acknowledge that the importance of such distribution was not explicit in our previous draft.
For this reason, we have added a paragraph about it in the literature review and background context (please see subsection 2.1 about the determinants of CB).
- Methodology needs to be further improved. For instance, the authors tested the impact of the transition from a group stage to home-and-away knockout games in the round of 32 with more teams from the highest ranked associations. Although limited explanation are presented as tables' description, but , it is not clear what estimation strategies have been used to analyse data or test the impact. More explanation on the chosen statistical method and the logic behind the method selection is needed, and should be added within the main text.
We thank the reviewer for their comments and apologise for this oversight. The chosen statistical method and its logic are now presented at the end of the methodology section (before Table 1).
- It would be important to see some robustness/sensitivity checks beyond what the authors have done. Has any robustness check been done to confirm the validity of the findings?
We thank the reviewer for their comment about robustness/sensitivity checks. We believe that having tested the comparison between women and men based on two different periods for men (i.e., 2001-2019 but also 1955-1973) represents some robustness/sensitivity checks.
I wish you the best of luck.
We thank the reviewer for their wishes and constructive feedback.
Reviewer 2 Report
Dear Authors,
The topic is interesting and actual.
I found only some minor issues. Find my comments attached!
All the best!
Comments for author File: 
Comments.pdf
Author Response
Dear Editor and Reviewers,
We want to thank you for the constructive and positive feedback provided.
We trust our response to your comments are convincing and, as such, contribute to improve the manuscript overall.
Please find below our responses in bold for each of the suggestions you have given us.
We hope they are satisfactory.
Revisions are visible in track changes in the manuscript.
We look forward to hearing back from you.
Best wishes,
The Authors
-
Reviewer 2
Dear Authors,
The topic is interesting and actual.
I found only some minor issues. Find my comments attached!
All the best!
We thank the reviewer for their positive feedback.
Dear Authors!
I see that this work is a result of a hard work. I highly appreciate the inclusion of limitations and future directions at the end!
We appreciate that the reviewer can see our hard work.
There are some issues which you can find below.
These are the formatting issues which have to be corrected:
- The point after the keywords should be removed
Done.
- There is no need for blank lines between paragraphs
Done.
- I recommend to change the “/” sign to “or”.
This has been revised accordingly.
- I think it would be better to use the full phrases instead of abbreviations in the case of hypotheses.
This has been addressed.
- The grouping in chapter “3.2” should be made according to template (“…- IMU refers to the percentage…”)
We thank the reviewer for identifying this issue.
We now use the appropriate bullet points.
- I think the names of the “5.1” and “5.2” sub-chapters should be not questions.
We thank the reviewer for their suggestion.
While we understand the reviewer’s point from a stylistic perspective, we believe that the titles of these sub-sections should be presented as questions as they illustrate elements of discussion and debates which are still not definitive within the world of football.
- The abbreviations of journals should be used in the “References” – maybe the editing team will deal with this minor issue.
We could not find this information in the guidelines.
For this reason, we will let the editing team deal with this if needed.
Content issues:
- It is true that the minimum no. of keywords is 3, but I would add some more.
We thank the reviewer for their suggestion.
We have changed our keywords as they were redundant with the title.
There are now more than three keywords (five).
- I think the authors should remove phrases like “we” and “our” and change it to “the study” or “the research”, “the authors”.
This has been addressed.
- The no. of used literature is okay, although there is still a possibility for further expansion. For e.g. Zsigmond et al. (2020) states the following: “Sport is considered to be a complex product that has impact on marketing, innovation and the other company functions. It is difficult to determine the price, sell and develop it as a product. At the same time, there are many options for distribution; the sales of different products generate income.”. They also state that: “Addressing the price-sensitive customer and motivate them to buy requires a thoughtful and considered marketing strategy in the field of sport.”
We thank the reviewer for suggesting the addition of this reference.
It is now cited in the first sentence of the manuscript.
- The beginning of the “5. Discussion” is a “note-like”. Please, write some “introducing sentences” at least at the beginning.
We thank the reviewer for their suggestion.
However, we feel that the “note-like” style is appropriate here since it is just a case of reminding the aims / research questions and whether the hypotheses are supported by the results or not.
The mentioned literature:
Zsigmond, T., Korcsmáros, E., Machová, R., & Šeben, Z. (2020). Interconnection of consumer behaviour of different generations and marketing strategy of a football club – experience in Slovakia. Marketing and Management of Innovations, 2, 221-234. https://doi.org/10.21272/mmi.2020.2-16
This has been added in our reference list.
Reviewer 3 Report
This is definitely an interesting paper. However, your hyotheses are somewhat ad hoc (not convincingly derived from the theoretical background that you refer to, i.e. Rottenberg 1956 and Neale 1964). Moreover, I find the paper to be "too dense" in the sense that you present too many findings. Why don't you just restrict yourself to the differences between the men's and the women's Champions League? In case you want to retain all your detailed findings I suggest estimating a regression model with gender and the different regimes as explanatory variables.
Author Response
Dear Editor and Reviewers,
We want to thank you for the constructive and positive feedback provided.
We trust our response to your comments are convincing and, as such, contribute to improve the manuscript overall.
Please find below our responses in bold for each of the suggestions you have given us.
We hope they are satisfactory.
Revisions are visible in track changes in the manuscript.
We look forward to hearing back from you.
Best wishes,
The Authors
-
Reviewer 3
This is definitely an interesting paper.
We thank the reviewer for their positive feedback.
However, your hyotheses are somewhat ad hoc (not convincingly derived from the theoretical background that you refer to, i.e. Rottenberg 1956 and Neale 1964).
We have made the link between our hypotheses and the literature more explicit in the revised version of the manuscript.
This is visible in the first sentence of the hypotheses subsection, as well as the addition of the specific determinants of CB and CI (identified previously in the literature) involved for the different hypotheses.
Besides, the determinant ‘identity of the teams in the competition’ is linked to the distribution of talent across countries and clubs.
We acknowledge that the importance of such distribution was not explicit in our previous draft.
For this reason, we have added a paragraph about it in the literature review and background context (subsection 2.1 about the determinants of CB).
Moreover, I find the paper to be "too dense" in the sense that you present too many findings. Why don't you just restrict yourself to the differences between the men's and the women's Champions League?
We thank the reviewer for their feedback.
However, we feel that it is important to present first a longitudinal analysis for both genders, then the comparative analysis between them.
This allows us to delineate the different factors that can explain the evolution of CB and CI in both competitions, as well as the differences between them.
In case you want to retain all your detailed findings I suggest estimating a regression model with gender and the different regimes as explanatory variables.
We thank the reviewer for their comment.
We agree that a regression model would be useful to confirm the results while controlling for the different explanatory variables at the same time.
The issue with a regression model with the data available in the dataset collected is that we would not be able to include an explanatory variable (e.g., differences in UEFA coefficients between clubs / countries) that would enable us to make a distinction between the different games played during the same leg or matchday of the same round for the same competition during the same season.
Yet, our data show that there can be important differences between such games in terms of CB and CI.
For this reason, we have not included a regression model.
However, we have added this as a limitation and direction for future research at the end of our manuscript.
