SPECTATOR VIOLENCE IN FOOTBALL INDUSTRY



Spectator Violence and Developments in Football Industry

Spectator Violence and Developments in Football Industry

Introduction

Violence at or in conjunction with sports events can involve spectators in one of three ways: Players may attack spectators, spectators may attack players or match officials, or spectators may fight among themselves. Probably the most frequently reported form of spectator violence in the modern world is the so-called problem of football or soccer hooliganism, a form that involves attacks on players, match officials, and, above all, fights between spectator groups. Soccer hooliganism generally refers to any spectator violence at or in conjunction with Association football (soccer in the United States and Canada) matches or associated with groups that claim allegiance to soccer clubs.

Discussion

Analysis of a range of statements made by English hooligans over a period of more than thirty years revealed that for the young men involved, football hooligan fighting is basically about masculinity, territorial struggle, and excitement (Dunning 1999). For them, fighting is a central source of meaning, status or “reputation,” and pleasurable emotional arousal. They speak of the respect among their peers that they hope their hooligan involvement will bring, and they refer to “battle excitement,” “the adrenaline racing,” and “aggro” as almost erotically arousing. Indeed, Jay Allan, a leading member of the Aberdeen Casuals, a Scottish football hooligan “firm” in the 1980s, described fighting at football as even more pleasurable than sex (Allan 1989). Author Bill Buford, who traveled with English football hooligans in the 1980s, wrote that “violence is one of the most intensely lived experiences and, for those capable of giving themselves over to it, one of the most intense pleasures…. Crowd violence was their drug” (1991: 201).

In 1977, U.S. journalist Peter S. Greenberg wrote that “Fear and loathing in the stands is certainly not a new phenomenon, but mass recreational violence has never been so rampant in the sports arenas of America” (quoted in Yiannakis et al. 1979: 218). This judgment was backed up by sociologists Harry Edwards and Van Rackages, who wrote, also in 1977, that “sport-related violence flourishes today in crisis proportions … violence has indeed increased and become more malicious—particularly over the last three years” (quoted in Yiannakis et al. 1979: 221). During the 1980s, however, this panic over sports and spectator violence seems to have subsided. Something similar happened regarding soccer hooliganism in England in the 1990s. It is impossible on the basis of present knowledge to say whether the concern expressed in the United States in the 1970s was more media invention than fact. What is certain is that spectator violence constitutes a worldwide problem and that, in its various manifestations, it continues to represent a serious threat to sport.

Statistics from the 1960s and the 1990s, show that English football hooligans have typically come from the lower occupational classes. Research on the social class of football hooligans in Scotland (Harper 1989), Belgium (Van Limbergen et al. 1987), the Netherlands (Van der Brug 1986), and Italy (Roversi 1994) suggests that hooligans in other ...