Local development and competitive soccer teams location. The Portuguese case

This work is focused on testing the following hypothesis: “The competitivenessof a Portuguese professional soccer team is influenced by the economicdevelopment level of the surrounding region.” Using a rational choice model andworking with binary time-series cross-sectional data, this work focuses on a Portugueseprofessional soccer team from 1970 to 1999. This is the first work on the teamsand economy of Portugal that tests this hypothesis. The results corroborate the mainimportance of three factors that increase the probability that a municipality willhouse the head office of a team that plays in the first league: 1) the per capita income,2) level of infrastructures, and 3) demographic dimension.