Why do they prefer the sea? The location of portuguese professional soccer teams

Abstract

This work aims at testing the hypothesis “The competitiveness of a Portuguese professional soccer team is influenced by the economic development level of the surrounded 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.