Sports fanaticism - high levels of intensity surrounding sporting events. This is either done based on the belief that extreme fanaticism can alter games for one's favorite team or because the person uses sports activities as an ultra-masculine "proving ground" for brawls, as in the case of football hooliganism.
The word hooliganism and hooligan began to be associated with violence in sports, in particular from the 1970s in the UK with football hooliganism. The phenomenon, however, long preceded the modern term. Sports crowd violence continues to be a worldwide concerning phenomenon exacting at times an inexcusable number of injuries, damage to property and casualties. No single account on its own can be used to understand or explain sports collective violence. Rather, individual, social and environmental factors interact and influence one another through a dynamic process occurring at different levels. Furthermore, any form of sport fan aggression should always be considered in reference to the wider social-structural and environmental context in which it takes place.
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