Comparing relative sporting success among countries: create equal opportunities in sport

International competition is an unfair competition between rich and poor countries, between well and poor populated countries, large and small countries. Several studies can be found in literature on the macro-economic factors that determine international success, such as population, wealth, religion, area, politics. This paper presents a method to measure relative success of countries while controlling for the impact of these socio-economic determinants. Consequently international sporting success of countries is compared on a more equal basis. We compare these results in one specific sport, namely tennis, with an overall success indicator, for which we use the Olympic Games. The results show that success in tennis is less determined by socio-economic factors than success during Olympic Games. Second, the ranking of countries according to absolute success differs from relative success. We may guess that other factors, like sports policy, are important success indicators. However there is a lack of literature in this domain. The method presented in this paper suggests to use relative success as a dependent variable to evaluate effectiveness of elite sports policies.