Professional Sports Teams as Business and as Club and Their Relation to Sports Violence

Picking up a theme from an earlier post regarding hooliganism and violence in sports in the United States when compared to a the same issue in sports, specifically soccer, in European countries, there are some notable differences that make US sports violence a little more individualistic.

For one thing, there's a difference in sporting culture. The most popular sports in the United States are often really only wildly popular in the United States. Baseball is a significant outlier here, but even that sport's popularity is on the wane in the United States. In Europe, and the rest of the world, soccer is the sport. This only serves to further nationalize the subset of fanatical soccer fans who engage in hooligan acts in the first place.

There's also the issue of geography. If we take the United Kingdom, and specifically England, as the model, every part of the country is accessible within a day using only ground transportation. This makes traveling to an away match very doable for almost every fan, including the most diehard fans. In the United States, it's very unlikely that the average Raiders fan will be able to travel to Tampa Bay for instance for a Sunday afternoon kick off. The folks who can make that trip are likely from a socioeconomic background not typically inclined to engage in hooligan behavior.

Additionally, and most importantly, there does not exist in the United States the kind of loyalty and identity link with sports franchises that exists in Europe. Every town, no matter how small, has a local club that is run as a club and not a business as is the case in the United States. Also, many clubs have historical social and/or political affiliations that pit groups of people who were already opposed to one another in further conflict. For instance, Barcelona is essentially the Catalan national team and support for that club carries with it all of the political and social injustices associated with Franco's rule of Spain. His club, Real Madrid, was and is supported by Spanish nationalists. There are political and social forces at work in that rivalry that have no equivalent in the United States. In Italy, Lazio is the club of the far rightwing. In Argentina, Boca Juniors is the club of the working class and River Plate is the club of the bourgeoisie.

Those sorts of characterizations occur over and over again at clubs throughout the soccer universe and really have no equal in the American sporting landscape. That's not to say we don't have a problem with sports and violence in this country, but that said violence doesn't occur with the same political, racial, and social vitriol that it does in countries where the economic, social, and political history is tied inextricably to individual clubs.