Hooliganism

and long-term ones. In the short term, terrorist attacks cause injuries to persons and in many cases, the loss of human life. Serious economic losses and the destruction of property and infrastructure is other immediate impact. Taking into account long-term consequences, terrorist incidents might negatively impact tourism and direct foreign investment in the country or region. The long-term fear of the public leads to economic losses and market disturbances, as well as the loss of trust in government institutions and authorities.

Hooliganism

Hooliganism is widespread in many countries. Sports events could be used as an opportunity to disseminate propaganda. Very often the participation of hooligans in sports events is accompanied by the use of alcohol and/or drugs, which trigger aggressive behaviour. This behaviour of hooligans can be life-threatening for many people or can be materialized into vandalism and other illegal activities. There are known cases of causing death and personal injury to more than one person in the course of sporting events. Sports events can also be an occasion to gather agitators who subsequently take “punitive action” against other teams or their supporters, or decide to carry out pogroms or criminal actions against minorities and other groups of people.

Football fandom provides another important example of the dissemination of violent extremism amongst supporters. The Ultras, which are defined as hardcore football fans, are highly active in the terraces of Europe and use the occasion to promote far-right violent extremism, anti-LGBT, racist, islamophobia and anti-Semitic narratives5. Thus, sports stadiums fairly often become places for the expression of all forms of extremism and anti-establishment sentiments. This in turn breeds violence, hatred and ultimately, hooliganism among football fans.

All this sets a clear task for the state authorities and the organizers of sports events to take measures to prevent illegal actions by agitators/hooligans. The degree of risk of aggressive behaviour of agitators and hooligans depends on many factors, including what and how much such agitators are, the type of sport that is being practised and others. State authorities usually keep records and monitor the activities of agitators and their leaders. Therefore, event organizers should contact the police and the like.

The factors contributing to violent behaviour and hooliganism during sports events are triggered by a conjunction of factors. A study6 on the youth and hooliganism in sports events conducted by the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe divided risk factors to hooliganism into two groups; personal traits of an individual and external (mainly social) factors.

In regards to individual factors, contributing causes could be frustration caused by the social and economic situations, unemployment, chronic existential uncertainty, hopelessness, lack of perspectives, economic inequalities, as well as psychological motives like boredom, adventurism and curiosity. External factors include social status and position in society, however, the study points out that not all hooligans come from the vulnerable lower social strata as some of the violent characteristics could be attributed to the middle or upper classes.

Other causes of hooliganism at sports events include resentment towards fans of the opposing club, poor security at stadiums, poor infrastructure of the event venue and excessive consumption of alcohol and drugs.

RAND Europe has also examined the factors associated with violent and antisocial behaviour at football events, identifying the following7:

• The influence of alcohol, even though the causal relationship between alcohol and hooliganism is unclear;

• Internal and external or relational psychological factors (rush of adrenaline, sense of meaning, etc.);

5 https://www.frontiersin.org/research-topics/19494/sport-radicalisation-and-violent-extremism 6 https://www.osce.org/serbia/118397 7 https://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/research_reports/RR2500/RR2580/RAND_RR2580.pdf