ABSTRACT
One of the most striking characteristics of the sports stadium is the emotional
intensity found there. On the one hand, stadia play host to an ‘adoring audience’
(Lewis 1992) of enthusiastic, shouting, celebrating or crying fans, while on the
other, they are a place in which deviant and violent behaviour, fuelled by emo-
tions such as anger and hatred, can break out. Thus however it is expressed,
sport seems to carry an ‘enormous emotional load’ (Wohl 1970: 122), something
that has repeatedly been described in popular novels such as Nick Hornby’s Fever
Pitch, in countless mass media reports and, also, in academic accounts such as
Norbert Elias’s case study on football which provided the introductory quote.
