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1. Introduction
The Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA) states that the interest in women's football is at an all-time high in the present day (FIFA, n.d.), and their suggestions are backed by the fact that the FIFA Women's World Cup 2019 was viewed by 1.12 billion viewers across the globe on TV and digital platforms, breaking the previous record set in 2015 by 30% (FIFA, 2019). There are over 30 million female footballers worldwide registered to FIFA, but attendance in top-tier women's football league is low as compared to their male counterparts (FIFA, 2019).
Rottenberg (1956) formulated a hypothesis that fans are more likely to watch a game with uncertain outcomes and this was the emergence of the theme of competitive balance (CB) in North American team sports (Rottenberg, 1956). This hypothesis became the foundation for uncertainty of outcome hypothesis (UoH) and theoretical research questions focusing on the structure of North American leagues including factors such as revenue sharing, draft systems and closed leagues were discussed by Neale (1964), Jones (1969), El-Hodiri and Quirk (1971) and Noll (1974). While the body of research on CB in professional team sports has proliferated since the seminal papers, it is still almost exclusive to the professional men's football in Europe and North America. However, studies have been done in other sports such as baseball, basketball and American football in the US (Fort and Quirk, 1995), tennis (Del Corral, 2009), F1 as well as rugby union (Williams, 2012). This study contributes to this literature by considering CB in the context of women's football by focusing on the five women's leagues in Asia.
It has been recognised by the Asian Football Confederation (AFC) technical committee that the highest standard in women's football must be maintained to be on par with European nations and United States of America and also raise the level of play in Asian women's football. The committee further agreed on a need to provide equal opportunities for girls and women to have access to the game and to encourage men's professional teams to use their resources to establish a women's team (AFC, 2019).
Between 2008 and 2012, the AFC has aided and will be aiding member associations with low economic growth such as Bahrain, Afghanistan, Cambodia...