Analysis of economic development factors of Iranian football based on Grounded theory

Football, as a popular international sport, has a large share in the development of each country's economy due to its large number of supporters and fans. Therefore, in order to develop any country in the world today, this field must be developed in the country and this research has been done with the aim of designing the economic development model of Iranian football. The present research was applied in terms of purpose and qualitative in terms of type of data used. The statistical population of the research included all sports management experts who have been experts in the field of sports, especially football . The research sampling method was holistic, which had reached theoretical saturation after 15 deep semi-structural interviews. According to the research findings, four main categories of economic development related to football policy (Managerial, macro environment, structural, club infrastructure), Affiliated with football clubs (players, fans, marketing, technology), dependent on the nature of football (game quality, game execution cases) and Items related to the global norm (management, infrastructure, revenue and expenditure and services) were identified in 4 categories, 14 core codes and 225 open codes. It can be deduced from the above findings that the factors related to the economic development of football from the roots of football and then football clubs in the main axis of development and with the support of domestic and external policy.