The Economic Impact of Sports Infrastructure on Territorial Development: A Bibliometric Mapping

Abstract

This study presents a bibliometric mapping of international research on the economic impact of sports infrastructure on territorial development, based on a corpus of 1,515 documents extracted from the Scopus database and analyzed using VOSviewer software, covering the period 2000–2025. The analysis reveals sustained growth in research output since the early 2010s, peaking in 2024–2025, which reflects the growing interest in this issue. The field is organized around the central concept of economic impact, closely associated with the notions of sports facilities, employment, and economic development, with increasing attention paid to social benefits.

The results highlight a clear dominance of developed economies in scientific production, led by the United States and the United Kingdom, along with a disciplinary structure centered on the social, economic, and management sciences (nearly 54% of the corpus). The research nonetheless remains fragmented across disciplines and geographical areas, and marked by a pronounced underrepresentation of Global South contexts.

This mapping underscores the interdisciplinary nature of the field and the need for contextualized research, particularly for the Moroccan case, in order to address a persistent geographical blind spot and inform territorial strategies based on sports investment.

JEL Classification: Z20, R11, R58, H54, O18, C88, A12.

Paper type : Theoretical Research.