Balanced argument

With the multi-million pound signings of football players still looming large on the sporting horizon; with the Indian Premier League in cricket having just come to an end; with the Formula One World Championship possibly heading towards a split; and with the centralist principles of the North American sporting model still firmly intact, a serious debate about competitive balance has now begun to emerge. But what is competitive balance, and what is involved in securing balanced competition? Indeed, in sports like European football and Formula One motor racing, is competitive balance an unattainable ideal, or are the prospects much brighter than such a judgement might suggest? Can the quest for competitive balance be simply fulfilled by preventing clubs like Real Madrid from expensively acquiring the services of the world's best athletes? Or is there something much more fundamental to it than this? For competitive balance to really exist, do all competitors need to be as equal as possible in every possible sense e.g. organisation size, available financial resources etc? Moreover, how should competitive balance be measured? If a different team wins the championship each season, should we be happy? Perhaps this is an over-simplification and it means something much more? How can/should the tensions inherent in managing competitive balance (e.g. player concerns about salary controls) be effectively addressed? And where might the optimum competitive balance lie? Isn't it actually more beneficial for sport if there is some element of imbalance? After all, in the extreme, if all teams are equally balanced, is there actually a sense that one might witness a series of drawn contests?