Does the Distribution of Broadcasting Revenue Improve or Harm Competitive Balance in Professional Football? A Systematic Narrative Review

Broadcasting revenues, which are now over €12 billion per year in the continent's top divisions and leagues, are clubs' biggest revenue stream and competitive balance is essential for the commercial and sporting health of professional football leagues. This systematic narrative review collates 25 peer-reviewed journal articles that were open-access and published from 2021–2026. This review does not seek to resolve the issue of whether distribution of broadcast revenue is good or bad for competitive balance, but instead provides a framework for understanding why the available evidence is conflictual. The review creates a conceptual framework connecting broadcasting revenue to other factors influencing club budgets, player acquisition, competitive balance, fan demand, and broadcasting value, as a closed loop, along with an evidence map cross-classifying studies by method and finding. The evidence map is organised around four systematic sources of disagreement: league structure, type of competitive balance metric applied, country/competition scope, and approach in analysing the data. Generally, if domestic distribution is egalitarian or is more stable, continental qualification is multi-team and this is correlated to improved or stable balance, but some panel-econometric and club-level concentration studies report ongoing imbalance. These patterns are best read as evidence for the disagreement framework rather than as a net answer to the title question, which the included evidence is too heterogeneous in method and scope to support answering directly. The review ends with implications for UEFA and the major domestic leagues, and a research agenda for the future.