The importance of the regional development on the location of professional soccer teams. The Portuguese case 1970-1999

This work aims at testing the hypothesis “The economic development level of a region influences the presence of professional soccer teams in the country’s first league, which have their head offices in that region”. Using a rational choice model and working with binary time-series cross-section data, this work focuses on the Portuguese case, from 1970 to 1999. The results corroborate the main importance of three factors, which increase the probability that a municipality has the head office of a team that plays in the first league: the per capita revenue, the level of infrastructures and the demographic dimension.