England’s performance at the World Cup was, even to the least football-fluent of us, pretty abysmal. About halfway through the second game, it was realised that the team wouldn’t be progressing to the knockout stage. And with England-themed merchandise slashed to half-price, advertisers losing out on millions of investment as people just stop watching so much football and the dwindling of an excitable, patriotic atmosphere, there’s a feeling of despondency.
But there's another, more worrying consequence: the fact that domestic violence rises by 38% when England exit the World Cup as they did this week.
The #StandUpWorldCup campaign have released a short video to raise awareness of Tender Edcuation and Arts, who are asking ‘that individuals and organisations…stand together this World Cup season and say “No excuses”.’ The slogan runs: ‘Lost the game? Lost your temper? Lose the excuses.’
And a video to accompany the campaign makes a short, sharp point. You can view it below.
As for that stat, it comes from research done by researchers at Lancaster University, who, using Freedom of Information requests, found two trends: ‘First, a match day trend showed the risk of domestic abuse rose by 26 percent when the English national team won or drew, and a 38 percent increase when the national team lost. Second, a tournament trend was apparent, as reported domestic abuse incidents increased in frequency with each new tournament.’
All of which puts England’s dismal performance over the past two weeks in some stark perspective.
Follow Sophie on Twitter @sophwilkinson
This article originally appeared on The Debrief.