The Role of Alcohol in the Link Between National Football Tournaments (Soccer) and Domestic Abuse – Evidence From England

Major sports events and domestic violence: A systematic review

“…In the North American (the USA and Canada) studies using police data, the focus was often on one city [e.g., Philadelphia (Adubato, 2016), Los Angeles (Sachs & Chu, 2000) and Calgary (Boutilier et al, 2017) or multiple cities in which national leagues had teams located (Card & Dahl, 2011; Gantz et al, 2006; Holman et al, 2010)]. In comparison, studies based in England looking at national teams competing in international competitions focused on police data from a region (such as Lancashire or the West Midlands) (Kirby et al, 2014; Trendl et al, 2021) or across several regions (33 out of 39 police force regions in England) (Brimicombe & Cafe, 2012).…”

“…Some of the police records included detail on whether alcohol was present, whether it was a newly reported perpetrator or whether the perpetrator was a repeat offender (and if repeated, the time between incidences being reported) (Holman et al, 2010; Trendl et al, 2021), whether it was publicly perpetrated, resulted in injury or there was a delay between incidence and reporting. However, Holman et al (2010) acknowledged that, for their study, police recording practices with regards to alcohol were inconsistent and as such could not produce any meaningful findings.…”

“…One study looked at just one competition season's worth of data (Adubato, 2016). Three studies looking at international events either examined data across 1 year (Brimicombe & Cafe, 2012), 3 years (Kirby et al, 2014) or multiple years (Trendl et al, 2021). Other studies looked at data across multiple seasons/years, from 2 years (White et al, 1992) to 11 years (Card & Dahl, 2011).…”

“…Most of the data extracted for analysis related to the day on which the sports event occurred, many specifying the hourly range from the time the game started: from within 3 h of the match starting (Trendl et al, 2021—study assessed three‐hourly time periods up to 24 h post‐game starting), within 8 h of the game starting (Adubato, 2016) and within 12 h (Card & Dahl, 2011) to within 24 h of the match starting (Dickson et al, 2016; Williams et al, 2013). Other studies looked at daily and monthly rates of DV, seeing where those rates increased in relation to a major sports event (Boutilier et al, 2017; Brimicombe & Cafe, 2012; Kirby et al, 2014; Sachs & Chu, 2000).…”

“…These behaviours may be exacerbated in a certain male‐dominated, aggression‐condoning social and leisure settings, like sports. Sport has long been seen as a cultural setting that contributes to violence against women (Gagnon, 1996), with the occurrence of major sports events being linked to an increase in reported DV incidences (Card & Dahl, 2011; Trendl et al, 2021).…”