Inside Slavia´s supporters: Fans who control the football matches in Czechia

Abstract

Purpose: The goal of this paper is to analyse the relationship between supporters’ verbal and other expression and their violent behaviour at selected football stadiums in Czechia. Methods: Primary data were collected by a questionnaire survey mainly at the Eden stadium in Prague in 2015/2016 and 2016/2017 seasons. A total of 158 respondents (aged 23.01 ± 10.11 years old) participated in this research, and all of the respondents were attending in a stand of home team supporters. Results: We found that expressions of demolishing the stadium and other disturbances are considered the most serious expression of violent behaviour by 56.96% of the supporters. On the other hand, 15.19% of the supporters had some experience with demolishing the stadium. Furthermore, 87.34% of the supporters stated that boo is the least serious problem, and almost every supporter (94.94%) had an experience with booing the referee. Conclusions: Based on the results of the research, we find that younger supporters were more tolerant of negative social phenomena in the surroundings of the stadium.