England win, lose or draw, and the reports still go up
Football does not really stop this year. England play Argentina in the World Cup semi-final on Wednesday, the final follows on 19 July, and pre-season friendlies start before anyone has recovered. The Premier League returns on 21 August, a week later than usual to give players a break, so London goes from World Cup fever straight into Arsenal versus Coventry with barely a pause. Pubs will be full all summer. So will fan zones, front rooms and WhatsApp groups planning the next watch party.
Behind that, a pattern that has been documented for over a decade tends to repeat. Domestic abuse reports rise around major football matches, and not only when the team you’re supporting loses.
The most cited figures come from a 2014 study by Stuart Kirby, Brian Francis and Rosalie O’Flaherty, published in the Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency. Researchers looked at Lancashire police force data, across the 2002, 2006 and 2010 World Cups, and found domestic abuse reports rose by 26% when England won or drew, by 38% when they lost, and stayed 11% higher than average the day after regardless of result. On match days, the force recorded an average of 79 reports, against 58 on days England didn’t play.
The more recent research a study by Anna Trendl, Neil Stewart and Timothy Mullett of Warwick Business School, published in Social Science and Medicine, used ten years of crime data from West Midlands Police, the second largest force in England, and found reported alcohol-related domestic abuse cases rose by 47% following an England win. The rise begins during the match itself, peaks in the three hours after full time, and tapers off over the next day. Showing win, lose or draw there is no safeguard.
London has its own shape to this. The Metropolitan Police’s Violence Against Women and Girls team, which has expanded its presence at Wembley over the past five years, recorded a rise in reports around major events at the stadium, from 6,596 to 11,987 year on year. The force attributes some of that to victims feeling more able to come forward rather than a pure spike in incidents. The City of London Police, meanwhile, are running a dedicated campaign for this World Cup, and their data points to something the national studies do not capture at all: around 90% of domestic abuse incidents reported within the Square Mile happen outside the home, mostly in hotels and bars rather than private residences, which changes what prevention looks like in a part of London built around exactly those venues. The National Police Chiefs’ Council recorded more than 300 domestic abuse offences during Euro 2024 in which the victim believed the perpetrator’s behaviour was linked to football.
Women’s Aid have built this year’s awareness campaign, ‘The Other Kick Off‘, around 11:37pm, the time they estimate reflects when many women and children are most afraid on a match night, when an abusive partner gets home after watching the game. The figure was displayed on digital billboards and vans near fan zones across London this summer. It follows a similar campaign in 2022 called ‘He’s Coming Home’, a title that does a lot of work in six words.
None of this means football causes domestic abuse. Commander Mandy Horsbrugh of the City of London Police put it plainly in a statement this summer: abuse is a choice made by the perpetrator, regardless of the result. What the research shows is narrower and harder to argue with, which is that major tournaments and the drinking, tension and heightened emotion that come with them tend to make existing situations worse, and that the risk does not end with the final whistle. With the Premier League back by the end of August, that risk does not really have an off-season either.
If you are experiencing domestic abuse, or you’re worried about someone who might be, the National Domestic Abuse Helpline is free, confidential and open 24 hours a day, every day of the year, on 0808 2000 247, run in partnership by Refuge and Women’s Aid.
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Photography: Felicity Crawshaw
