Major League Baseball and Crime: Opportunity, Spatial Patterns, and Team Rivalry at St. Louis Cardinal Games

Abstract

Hosting professional sports teams is often seen as a financial benefit for cities. In the following analysis, we provide evidence that sports teams also carry costs. The analysis, the first examining a Major League Baseball team, finds significant increases in a variety of crimes during home game days of the St. Louis Cardinals. Adjusting for attendance and game length, this study finds that larcenies, motor vehicle thefts, minor assaults, disorderly conduct, and destruction of property increase in volume during game days. Increases concentrate especially around the immediate stadium area, but some are also observable in citywide levels of crime. Additionally, this study examines differences between the time of day a game is played and games played against its historic rival, the Chicago Cubs.

Professional Sports and Crime: Do Professional Hockey Games Increase City-Level Crime Rates?

“…Prior research that focuses on the relationship between professional sports and crime has largely yielded inconsistent findings (Breetzke & Cohn, 2013; Copus & Laqueur, 2019; Kalist & Lee, 2016; Mares & Blackburn, 2019; Marie, 2016; Miller et al, 2013; Piquero et al, 2021; Pyun & Hall, 2019; Rees & Schnepel, 2009; Yu et al, 2016). The majority of these studies are also limited as they include all crimes that occur over the course of the game day, even those that occur hours before the game begins.…”

“…While professional sports provide communal benefits such as entertainment, opportunities to bond with family and friends, and additional job opportunities (Swindell & Rosentraub, 1998; Wann, 1995), a limited—but growing—area of research regarding professional sports is how they can breed societal consequences, specifically how sports games can increase city-level crime (Breetzke & Cohn, 2013; Campaniello, 2013; Copus & Laqueur, 2019; Kalist & Lee, 2016; Mares & Blackburn, 2019; Marie, 2016; Pyun & Hall, 2019; Rees & Schnepel 2009; Yu et al, 2016). One theoretical viewpoint that can help explain how sports games can affect crime is routine activities theory, proposed by Cohen and Felson (1979).…”

“…For example, theft, vandalism, and disorderly conduct have been repeatedly shown to increase significantly on days in which professional baseball (Mares & Blackburn, 2019), professional soccer (Marie, 2016), and both professional (Kalist & Lee, 2016; Pyun & Hall, 2019) and Division 1 college football (Rees & Schnepel, 2009) are played. 1 Burglary also produces consistent findings, but unlike the offenses mentioned above, sports games do not seem to affect burglary (Breetzke & Cohn, 2013; Mares & Blackburn, 2019). However, for other offenses including motor vehicle theft, robbery, assaults, and alcohol-related offenses, the results are not as conclusive.…”

“…Although some studies find that some or all of these crimes are significantly higher on professional hockey (Kurland & Piza, 2018) soccer (Marie, 2016), professional (Kalist & Lee, 2016; Miller et al, 2013), college football (Rees & Schnepel, 2009), and professional and college basketball (Yu et al, 2016) game days at a city-level, others find null effects (Breetzke & Cohn, 2013; Pyun & Hall 2019). Regarding assault, Mares and Blackburn (2019) found that simple assaults are significantly higher on days in which the St. Louis Cardinals, a professional baseball team, play but aggravated assaults do not change. With regard to a more non-traditional sporting event, Piquero et al (2021) observed no changes in violent, property, or sex trafficking–related crimes as a result of the Formula 1 Grand Prix racing weekend.…”

Climate change and victimization risk: A disaggregated look at NCVS data

“…In addition to the economic controls we also employ a ‘standard’ battery of binaries: year, month, number of weekend days and number of days in the month. The latter variables control for unobserved variation tied to specific time periods (Mares and Blackburn, 2019)…”