As Euro 2020 Ends, A Reminder That Domestic Violence Surges After Sporting Events, Irrespective Of Who Wins.

As Euro 2020 Ends, A Reminder That Domestic Violence Surges After Sporting Events, Irrespective Of Who Wins.

When the IPL is going on, it’s become a sort of ritual for fans of cricket to host watch parties, or go to a bar and watch the game, with some buddies over some booze. It’s a trend that hasn’t even spared non-fans, who’re probably just in it for the company, the alcohol and the Instagram stories, and not the game. The same can be said for another game, football, which draws fanatics in large numbers to enjoy the matches over drinks. And we don’t really think twice about making these plans, do we? But it’s all fun and games until we’re faced with a startling, disturbing statistic. No matter who wins, no matter who is coming home with the Euro 2020 trophy (it was Italy, FYI), there are many men who are coming home drunk and upset. And incidences of domestic violence are likely to rise after these matches because of this.

Where there is sports, there is aggression. And we all know that sports fans often lack the very ‘sportsman spirit’ that their favourite players or teams would have. So if their favourite team or player loses a game, it’s not a stretch to imagine that some fans might get upset so hard that you’d think they were the ones who first-hand lost the match. Add to that the possibility of them having consumed copious amounts of alcohol, and there’s a strong chance that they might not be able to keep a handle on their rage. And most of the time, the outlet for this rage is violent domestic abuse.

FI Domestic Violence During Quarantine

And this isn’t mere conjecture. There are studies that attest to a spike in domestic violence cases in the aftermath of a sporting event. A 2011 study conducted by David Card and Gordon B. Dahl, titled Family Violence and Football: The Effect of Unexpected Emotional Cues on Violent Behavior, suggests that “… emotional cues based on the outcomes of professional football games exert a relatively strong effect on the occurrence of family violence.” An ‘upset loss’, which is when the home team (supported by the domestic abuser) is expected to win by a huge margin but ends up losing, can lead to a 10% increase in the rate of at-home violence by men against their wives and girlfriends.

The study also suggested that if the match is between traditional rival teams (like an India vs Pakistan cricket match), or is a major event especially on a holiday, it has a bigger effect on the violence compared to other games.

In yet another study, this one in conducted in 2014 by academics at Lancaster University, and examining data from three football World Cups, police reports of domestic violence increased by 38% when the team lost and 26% if they won or match was a draw. There are other studies which surprisingly suggest that the abuse actually got worse when England won.

One more study worth citing, which went a little further in examining the cues that caused a rise of domestic violence, is a rather recent one; from July 4, 2021 to be precise. In their paper, titled ‘Football, alcohol and domestic abuse’ for Centre for Economic Performance, researchers Ria Ivandic, Tom Kirchmaier and Neus Torres-Blas collected and studied individual call date from Greater Manchester with the timing of football matches over eight years.

They noted that in the initial 2-hour duration of the game, there was actually a 5% decrease in incidents of domestic violence, probably suggesting that a substitution effect. Which means the men were distracted by the football match as it captured their attention and kept them busy. However, after the game was over, the domestic violence was observed to be increasing and peaking about 10 ours after the game. Cumulatively, the data suggested that sporting events do in fact influence the rise of domestic abuse cases. Furthermore, there were more factors that drove the increase, such as the consumption of alcohol by the perpetrator of the violence and if the matches were played before 7 pm. Weirdly enough, their study suggested that unexpected outcomes of matches didn’t exactly have a significant effect on the incidence.

Also Read: Advocate Ishanee Sharma Talks To Us About Domestic Violence, Women’s Options In Abusive Marriages

If you were to go on Twitter right now, there’s a video going viral of some use England football fans engaging in violent behaviour and racial abuse after their home team lost to Italy in the 2020 Euro Cup. It was also reported that earlier, a bunch of fans who didn’t even have tickets to the game, tried to force themselves into the Wembley Stadium, causing utter chaos.

It’s not a stretch to imagine that the aggression felt by these people, and propagated further by alcohol, might not have subsided, and many could’ve carried it home to their families.

Sports have often been used as a tactic to channel men’s aggression into something productive and less harmful. Remember in Chak De! India, when Shah Rukh Khan’s coach Kabir Khan reprimands team member Balbir Kaur (Tanya Abrol) who has a bad temper, to keep her aggression for the field and not use it on her own team outside the field? When they go to play the World Cup, she manages to use it well, and win the team match, and we eventually see how she becomes much more calm and in control in her life because she’s found a better outlet for it. While people who play a sport have this medium to pour all their rage into, fans of the sport don’t. In fact, for them, a game might actually be a catalyst that brings out their rage, onto wives, children and even the elderly in their homes.

The situation is so serious that Women’s Aid, which is a national charity in UK working towards ending domestic violence against women and children, has launched a campaign as a reminder of just how bad it might get in the aftermath of the Euro 2020 match. Especially now that we know it’s not coming home to England.

It sucks that in 2021, we have to relay obvious messaging about such catalysts, but then again, it has already been a year and a half of rises in domestic violence cases, thanks to the pandemic. Victims are already locked in with their abusers, and we need to be extra vigilant when events that might cause a possible incidence of violence are upon us.

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Jinal Bhatt

A Barbie girl with Oppenheimer humour. Sharp-tongue feminist and pop culture nerd with opinions on movies, shows, books, patriarchy, your boyfriend, everything.

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