Fan Violence In Sports

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Sports and its events are often portrayed as a pastime of bonding and enjoyment. However, this belief is often disregarded, especially when pride and power (winning) are on the line. Sports can transform from an enjoyable to dangerous event. In this case, in sports, pride and violence can easily be intertwined. Conversely, the pride of a fan can easily give way to violence if fans perceive another fan is overstepping their boundaries. This can and often does lead to violent outbursts of rage and isolation of the fan’s once relationship with other fellow fans and even the team as well.
Within sports, pride is expressed thru different levels. According to sport marketing scholars Alain Decrop and Christian Derbaix, there are 4 different levels …show more content…

Primarily, many of the times that violence occur at sporting events, they are among fans of the opposing teams because “ [v]iolence does not evolve among heterogeneous people at the sporting event. Rather, a process of selection occurs” (Ward, 2002, p. 462). However, during the 2003 game 6 of the Chicago Cubs versus the Miami Marlins playoff game Ward’s theory of heterogeneous fan violence was debunked because fan violence does not just occur between two teams and their fans, but violence can occur between similar fans, in this case, between a Chicago Cub fan against the entire Chicago Cub fan …show more content…

In the documentary, Gibney interviews fellow Cub fan and attendee of the 2003 playoff game Laurie Holmes stated, “ everybody was thinking ‘this is a great game’; I want this ball” (Gibney, 2011). However, very few Cub fans had empathy for the violence and isolation that Bartman had to endure. Sociologist Eric Anderson described the theory as, “ ‘in-group’ and ‘out-group’ serves to divide communities and reify stereotypes of those we perceive as being different” (Anderson, 2010, p. 141). However, what was unique about Bartman’s experience was that Bartman was not simply categorized as either the in or out groups, but rather he had been a part of both categorizes because of his once established relationship with the Cubs and his untimely severance of the relationship with the Cubs and their fans. Not only was Bartman harassed and threatened, but he was left to fiend for himself and disregarded by those affiliated as a fan with the

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