Football tourism: a bibliometric analysis of published works in the tourism-based journals (2003–2019)

ABSTRACT Bibliometric analysis can be a useful approach to measure any scientific field's development. Overall, the studies addressing football (soccer) tourism – a growing niche of the sport tourism field – are at an infancy stage. Hitherto, no systematic analyses linked to football tourism have been carried out. This study aimed to fill this literature gap by examining football-based tourism research studies published in tourism-based journals, particularly to identify the primary means of publication, temporal distribution, the most productive authors and institutions, countries, standard authoring, collaborative networks, and the central themes investigated on it. The study's scope was delimited from the year of the first identified publication – 2003 – until December 31, 2019. In total, 67 publications focusing specifically on football tourism were identified among 27 journals. Findings revealed that only two journals – Journal of Sport & Tourism and Tourism Management – concentrated 43.27% of the knowledge production. Although revealed to be globally spread, football tourism investigations have seen the United States and its universities as the most prolific producers of football tourism studies. The football tourism niche reflects a remarkable tendency to produce investigations on and around its mega-events, notably the FIFA Men's World Cup. However, emerging trends such as football club-based tourism (stadium tours, museums, memorials, live matches, and pre-season football camps) were identified. This paper contributes to the sport tourism field and football tourism sub-field by sharing conclusive points about football tourism studies' state of the art and what is needed for its development.