Violent Sports Fans and Injured Bystanders: How Might the Law and Economics of Ticket Prices Influence Team Liability?

Eric Crawford of the Louisville Courier-Journal has an interesting piece on overly-passionate fans who become violent when their teams struggle or disappoint. (Crawford, "When Obsessive Meets Compulsive," Louisville Courier-Journal, 8/15/05). Crawford examines fans who throw things onto the field or who curse at players/coaches/referees, as well as stay-at-home fans who merely break things, like large-screen TVs, much to the anger of their spouses and children. His research includes a recent poll of University of Kentucky sports fans, where 16 percent of respondents admitted to swearing or cursing at players or referees while attending games, and 5 percent acknowledged getting into fights or hostile shouting matches while attending games. Considering that Kentucky basketball games hold about 20,000 fans, and the school's football games hold between 40,000 and 60,000 fans, 16 percent and 5 percent of patrons entail quite a few people who might upset and possibly endanger the children, families, and other passive fans who sit nearby.

Peter Roby, director of the Center for the Study of Sport in Society at Northeastern University, is interviewed in the piece. He notes that as sports have become more important in society (as measured by monetary value and media attention), fans' passion has intensified, a phenomenon that has exacerbated the likelihood of violent reaction. Roby also details how as sports teams have become more meaningful to the average person, fans have perceived a greater stake in their teams' success, and thus a greater need to "respond" to team activities. Perhaps that partly explains the melee in Detroit last year.

Separate, but related to Crawford's article and Roby's point is the legal interest teams bear in ensuring patron safety. Along those lines, a fan that suffers an accidental/bystander injury from a fight in the stands would likely have a cognizable claim in tort law against the offending fans and also, more lucratively, the team and the stadium operator. That latter claim would concern the "duty" ascribed to sports teams and stadium operators in ensuring reasonable levels of security.

From the consumer's perspective, rising levels of violence among patrons would seem to posit a heightened duty for teams to ensure safety--there are more bad things going on in the stands, and teams and stadium operators know this, and they are responsible for the safety of fans, so they need to elevate their safety measures. In contrast, teams might argue that fans are aware of rising levels of violence in the stands, and they should internalize that risk prior to attending the game--put differently, a team owner might say, "look, if you don't want to pay $70 and expose yourself to some degree of bystander risk, then stay at home and watch the game on TV."

A law and economic approach to this question might ask how much fans are willing to pay in order to watch a safer game. Would you be willing to spend, say, an extra $5 on a $70 game ticket in order for your favorite team to hire more security guards and thereby diminish the probability of you getting accidentally punched by a drunken fan from 1 in 100 to 1 in 1000? If your answer is no, would the $5 be worth it for your child who attends the game with you?

Or, should teams have varied seating based on safety, with "safer" seating costing more (say, an incremental ticket increase of $10 instead of $5), but also featuring more security guards, cameras, and the benefit of self-selection bias from those who would pay to sit there? That approach would seem to economically punish families with young children who want to attend games, but 1) it would provide them with greater security, which may be well-worth the extra $10 per game ticket, and 2) it would preserve the attendance of the marginal number of fans who would otherwise be priced out of games should every fan have to bear a $5 safety tax. In that respect, it might be quite efficient.

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