The Glories of Immigration: How Soccer Wins Shape Opinion on Immigration

While there is a great deal of anecdotal evidence on the impact of soccer wins on attitudes toward immigrants and immigration, there is relatively little hard empirical evidence. It is expected that soccer stimulates more positive attitudes towards immigrants when it highlights immigration benefits rather than costs. Individual-level data from the eight rounds of the European Social Survey (2002-2016) in Spain and aggregate data from the Spanish professional soccer league, La Liga, were used to test the hypothesis that the more foreign players in the team of the club winning the corresponding season of Spain’s La Liga, the more favorable the views toward immigrants in the club’s region in that year. The main finding is that, irrespective of how attitudes toward immigrants and immigration are measured, the more foreign players in the winning club, the more positive the views respondents in the regions have about the issue.