Modern fan violence in football (soccer) – a scoping review

This article presents the results of a scoping review aimed at (1) identifying modern forms of fan violence in football (soccer) and (2) associating them with social causes. A search was conducted on the WOS database for publications focused on fan violence in football between 1 January 2001 and 22 January 2025, yielding 432 papers. After these were screened against ten eligibility criteria, 77 papers were finally selected for analysis. The results indicated that fan violence in football is a global issue, documented in research from 30 countries on five continents, with growing scholarly attention over time. Importantly, the analysis identified 28 manifestations of fan violence in football, categorized using three criteria, viz. form of violence, its target and its place of occurrence. These manifestations have been associated with 21 categories of social, demographic, economic and psychological factors identified in the literature as their causes, thus providing a conceptual map.