Football, alcohol, and domestic abuse

Domestic abuse dynamics are altered by soccer games, with alcohol also playing a factor.    

Timing of Domestic Violence

• During a soccer game, there is a 5% decrease in domestic abuse incidents compared to two hours prior to the game, likely due to a perpetrator’s focus on the game.  
  • This decrease returns to its pre-game level after the game finishes.
• Following the game, there is a 5% increase in domestic abuse incidents every two hours for the first four hours.  
• The maximum increase in domestic abuse incidents occurs 10 to 12 hours after the start of the game, at 7.4%.  
  • This would mean for a game that started at 3pm, calls would peak from 1-2am.   
• This increase in domestic abuse incidents is largely driven by early games that start before 7 pm.   
• Domestic abuse by female perpetrators and ex-partner perpetrators were not impacted by soccer games. 

Alcohol as a Mechanism

• Perpetrators under the influence of alcohol during early games make up a sizable amount of the increase in domestic violence.   
• When separating data by perpetrators using alcohol and perpetrators not using alcohol, the study found that only perpetrators using alcohol increased domestic abuse after a game.   
  • This indicates that emotions are not the sole cause of domestic abuse in these incidents, as perpetrators not using alcohol, who would also have emotional reactions to the game, did not increase their domestic abuse.  
  • Stakes of the game (whether a team was predicted to win or lose) also did not have a statistically significant different impact on domestic abuse incidents.   

Soccer games can impact the dynamics of domestic abuse, with domestic violence decreasing during the game and increasing after. Early games where perpetrators are using alcohol, and able to drink for much longer throughout the day, are largely responsible for this increase. Policies delaying the start of games to the evening and aiming to reduce alcohol consumption have the potential to prevent domestic abuse related to soccer games.  

This study uses multiple regression models to estimate the impact of variables including time after the game, game start time, alcohol consumption, and game stakes on domestic abuse incidents using data from 434,596 domestic violence report calls from Greater Manchester and 780 soccer games played by Manchester City or Manchester United. Domestic violence calls were gathered from five datasets from April 2012 to June 2019. These datasets included the calls for service from the command and control central, the crime register, a victim dataset, an alleged perpetrator dataset, and a dataset with information about the relationship between the victim and perpetrator. Data on soccer games was gathered for all games played by either Manchester City or Manchester United in the observation period. Data on game starting time, outcome, and expected outcome based on betting odds were also collected.