Thieves Around the Stadium: Comparing the Effects of Football and Soccer on Crime
Jeremy Budner & Rodrigo Schneider
What the paper says
Operating on granular, publicly available crime data from 2017–2022, we utilize negative binomial regressions to investigate the spatial relationship between gamedays and crime in Atlanta, comparing effects of football and soccer. Our models suggest that football increases crime near the stadium in Atlanta substantially relative to the effects of soccer. Football games are correlated with a 113% increase in crime—concentrated within 0.5 miles of the stadium and robust across models. We support our findings using a temporal analysis within gamedays, which illustrates that the distribution of crimes is centered around the hours surrounding the start of the game. Our results support the existence of a substitution effect of crime towards the stadium on game days and the existence of demographic differences between football and soccer fans in the United States. Mercedes-Benz stadium should implement additional security measures, including free lockers within the stadium, to shield their patrons from theft.
Evidence weight
Balanced mode · F 0.40 / M 0.15 / V 0.05 / R 0.40
| F · citation impact | 0.50 × 0.4 = 0.20 |
| M · momentum | 0.50 × 0.15 = 0.07 |
| V · venue signal | 0.50 × 0.05 = 0.03 |
| R · text relevance † | 0.50 × 0.4 = 0.20 |
† Text relevance is estimated at 0.50 on the detail page — for your query’s actual relevance score, open this paper from a search result.