Fact-Check: Does Domestic Violence Against Women Increase on Football Sundays?

Yes, it does. But there is a bit more to it.

All the Rage has actually covered something similar before with our piece on the Inciting World of Sports. The domestic violence claim has taken a lot of different forms (“Domestic violence triples on Super Bowl Sunday,” “More women are victims of violence on Super Bowl Sunday than any other day of the year”).

So how much of this is actually true? Three separate studies debunked the fact that violence against women is at an all-time high on football Sundays.  In fact, according to recent research in the Quarterly Journal of Economics, summer holidays like the 4^th of July have a domestic violence rate three times higher than days with televised professional football games.

However, research seems to suggest that while domestic violence rates may not be at their highest on game day, there does seem to be an increase. In the same study, researchers suggested that intimate partner violence does increase on certain football Sundays as opposed to those Sundays with no football game. This phenomenon was also noted in a 2006 study published in the book Handbook of Sports and Media with their findings that on days after an NFL football game, domestic violence rates increased. In a 2011 study, researchers David Card and Gordon Dahl take their findings a bit further. They found that domestic violence rates do indeed increase after a football game, but only on days when the favored team (i.e., the team expected to win) suffers an unexpected loss. Looking at 6 cities with NFL football teams (Carolina Panthers, Detroit Lions, New England Patriots, Denver Broncos, Kansas City Chiefs, and Tennessee Titans), they found that there was about a 10% increase in male domestic violence against woman on game days with an upset.

By Lisa Gehrke
Lisa is a senior Psychology and Human Development major at the University of Wisconsin- Green Bay.  She will be graduating in May and hope to attend graduate school to obtain a Ph.D in Clinical Psychology.