Is Income Level a Relevant Trigger to Decide Starting Refereeing?

There is an open debate about the motivation of football referees to start and progress in their profession. Identifying altruistic and self-servicing factors is critical for the federations to establish the most effective policies to enlarge the referee’s career and minimise turnover. In this work, the null hypothesis was set to be that the number of referees in Madrid is not affected by the unemployment rate (as a proxy of income level). Sequential linear regressions generated three different models using data from the Instituto de Estadística de la Comunidad de Madrid (IECM) and the Real Federación de Fútbol de Madrid (RFFM). The best-fit outcome shows that the number of referees is partly determined by the unemployment rate in their postcode at the beginning of the career, although the significance of this correlation decreases for experienced referees.