Angertainment, Inc.
The Business of Undermining Democracy

The Classical Era

”Quos Deus vult perdere, prius dementat.”

“Whom gods would destroy, first they make mad.”

While the Latin text translated above has numerous permutations and possible sources, many scholars trace the sentiment back to Euripides or possibly even Sophocles, and Greek classical theatre. A survey of the leading roles in the Greek dramatic canon reveals a host of characters consumed and ultimately undone by some “tragic flaw.” And most often, the tragic flaw stems from some internal or external conflict that ultimately explodes in anger.

On his return from years of war, King Orestes is slain by his angry, vengeful wife Clytemnestra. A young woman must stand up and speak out against injustice and go to her own death in *Antigone*. Oedipus, trapped by a curse leveled by the gods, must tear his own eyes out.

Even looking back more than two thousand years, the combination of fear and anger provided a critical element in the earliest formal entertainment. Additionally, in considering the evolution of entertainment into angertainment, it’s worth remembering that in Greek theatre (at least in the tragedies), the outcome was understood. The audience was not sitting in suspense waiting to see what was going to occur in these stories. The myths, the characters, their roles, and the action that was going to appear on the stage was well known. The dramatic interest flowed from the playwright and the actors skill in depicting a familiar story. No surprise endings; the result was known.

The Essence of Greek Tragedy

Aristotle, in the Poetics, introduces the idea of “the catharsis of pity and fear.” In his analysis, he saw value in the audiences experience of these traumatic, mythic events. It was, in a sense, the very first reference to virtual reality.

The audience, living through the actions on stage, experienced the same emotions and absorbed the lessons of the gods. Individuals grew stronger and wiser as they lived through the events that destroyed the tragic hero. Throughout the process, they were able to experience anger, frustration, and fear and ultimately overcome the emotions—the madness—that had inflicted those “whom the gods would destroy.”

The idea of catharsis is useful. For people with pent-up anger, fear, or frustration, the idea of letting it go is appealing. The experience of seeing a scene on the stage allows them to live through the experience and feel the emotional release.

Anger is an important component in comedy as well. Classical-era Greeks knew that, too. Characters are invented and propped up for us to laugh at. Frequently they are dislikable characters. In some cases we are led to despise them. And as a result, when they are thwarted or undone in some way, we are delighted to laugh at their anger. The comic buffoon is often left in a sputtering rage. Audiences laugh heartily. And, in a nod to the future of comedy, frequently these comic buffoons had names and character traits that gave them more than a passing resemblance to real people. Political satire and political attacks provided content for entertainers two millenia ago.

The Romans Up the Ante: Spectacle and Blood

Our image of Greek theatre is bland. The sun-bleached remains of ancient theatres create a deceptive image. Historians assure us that ancient Greek buildings were splashed with color. The action on the stage was surely cloaked in vibrant costumes. Masks, designed to connect with audience members hundreds of feet from the stage must have added to the spectacle. Yet Greek theatre remained constrained by its own aesthetic limits. Yes, there was violence. But the violence occurred primarily offstage.

Theatre, as it evolved in the Roman Empire, had no such constraints.

Recognizing the inherent attraction of violent action, Roman playwrights put violent action center stage. Limited only by the stagecraft of the day, Roman theatre audiences were treated to mayhem and murder; scenes drenched in blood and gore.

With the taboo on violent action broken in the theatre, the Romans took dramatic action and spectacle to the next, logical extreme. If theatrical violence was exciting and appealed to audiences—how about the real thing?

Armed men—gladiators—doing battle. Animal combats. What happens when you put a hungry lion in an arena with an angry bull. The famous matchups between lions and Christians.

It is fair to say that the Romans created the first large-scale angertainment industry. Records show that a network of trainers, animal trappers, and other suppliers existed to supply Roman “circuses” with their performers. High-ranking, wealthy patrons sponsored the events. Authorities added expendable undesirables to the cast, for use in the shows.

Perhaps these Roman spectacles can be seen as the very beginning of the horror genre of entertainment. Seeing frightened humans confronted by wild animals—is that similar to the cinematic trope that shows an average family threatened by mad killers, possessed beings, or poltergeists?

The Romans recognized that there is a large appreciative audience for entertainment that featured fear and anger. They were not the first practitioners of this kind of showmanship; just the first to do it on such a large scale.

Cockfighting, Bear Baiting, and Bull Fighting

Encyclopedia entries for cockfighting say it originated in Asia, perhaps as long ago as 1000 BCE. The first record of a cockfight in China dates to 517 BCE. The activity was popular and spread throughout the civilized world. The idea of pitting animals against each other and against humans seems to have provoked universal human enjoyment. Roman armies that invaded Britain included a canine component; trained war dogs descended from the Molossus, a breed of Greek dogs. The Romans were impressed by the British Mastiffs they encountered, and soon specially bred fighting dogs spread throughout the Roman empire.

Throughout the middle ages and into the 19th century, bear baiting was a popular pastime. King Henry VIII of England had a bear pit constructed at his palace. Queen Elizabeth I of England enjoyed the spectacle and overruled an attempt to ban it.

Bear baiting involved the creation of a pit—a kind of arena that kept the animals inside the walls and the spectators safe outside them. A bear was chained either by a leg or by the neck to a pole in the center of the pit. Dogs—breeds like mastiffs and English bulldogs—were set upon the bear to attack it.

The bears, the stars of the show, were attacked, mauled, and bloodied, but were not killed. The dogs were more expendable. Bear baiting promoters had permission, it seems, to seize dogs from the streets to use them in their shows.

Bear baiting pits existed side-by-side with theatres, attracted the same audiences, and charged about the same prices. Philip Henslowe, the theatrical entrepreneur who owned theatres and produced plays by Christopher Marlowe and others, also purchased animal baiting franchises from the crown.

In addition to bear baiting, these entertainments included bull baiting. One reported program had the dogs set upon a pony that had a monkey tied on its back.

As difficult as it may be to imagine today, while William Shakespeare was writing and producing many of the world’s greatest works of dramatic art, spectators were flocking to bloody spectacles located a few hundred feet away. The appeal of watching one creature anger and torment another seems to appeal to some basic human instinct.

The Ritual of the Bull Ring (Corrida)

Blood sport entered a higher plane in Spain. Bull fighting was part of the cultural mix in the middle ages; an extension of the kind of spectacle enjoyed in the Roman arenas and bear pits. In this early form of bull fighting, men on horseback engaged the bulls with lances. This was the era of crusades, when jousting was evolving as a martial art and El Cid cast a noble shadow across Spain.

Then bull fighting changed.

In the early 1700s, the blood sport became a ritualized dance. Human stars emerged. For its role in the play, the bull is cast as the antagonist. Like many great stage villains, the fighting bull became an honored character in the drama. Standing in the center of the arena, he becomes a star, albeit a star with an exceedingly short career.

The great innovation in this form of blood sport came in about 1726. Carrying a small cape and a sword, a Spaniard, Francisco Romero, descended from horseback to fight the bull on foot.

The ritual of the bullfight—the corrida—provides an instructive template for students of the angertainment industry. While bullfighting lives in a fuzzy realm with elements of a live sporting event, ritual theatre, and pop culture, it embodies all of the central components of a great angertainment experience.

A large and avid audience is present. As the corrida became more popular, purpose-built stadiums were constructed. People came to watch with only one expectation: that there would be blood. They came prepared to argue points of style and discuss the courage of the “enemies” turned loose in the ring. To add to the thrill, there was always the possibility that some of the blood that would be spilled would belong to a human. But without any doubt, the audience came expecting to see blood.

The bulls provide the adversaries. Beasts, capable of hurting and possibly killing the mortals who are facing them. The beasts were raised to be fighting bulls and were, in some ways, built up to be seen as bigger, fiercer, and more dangerous because bigger, fiercer, and more dangerous made for a better show.

An entourage of brave humans, some mounted on horses and some on foot, served as the cast of protagonists. They were the “good guys” in the drama that was about to play out. And central to each entourage, the true star of the show, came the matador. Here was a human being willing to stand up against all odds, daring and baiting the enemy and ultimately slaying it.

Significantly, a proper corrida required a certain amount of stage management. If the brave angertainer—the matador—went out in an arena with a bull fresh from the pastures, it would have been too dangerous. The chances that the matador might lose were too great. Certain steps had to be taken to prepare the enemy to be slain.

Lances, delivered by horsemen, came first. They injure the bull, draw blood, and are delivered in such a way as to cause the bull to lower its head. Next, the picadors stab the bull with the barbs that enliven and enrage the bull. The goal is not to kill but to anger, and at the same time, weaken the bull.

Finally it is left to the star of the show, the matador waving his red cape, the muleta, to tease the wounded animal. In a series of “passes” the matador sidesteps the bull, further wears it down, and sets it up for the finale of the show. With a sword—and possibly another short sword in case the first sword doesn’t do the job—the bull is executed.

Is it possible that all the spectators come with a kind of bloodlust? I suspect there are some who attend because of social pressure; who have no desire to watch a ritual slaughter. But for the most part, the people who come to a bullfight are there for the bloodletting. The outcome of the fight is a near certainty. Yes, there is always the possibility that a matador will be gored; but then other bullfighters will kill the bull. Additionally, if a bull gores a matador, the mother of the fighting bull may also be killed in order to cut off the bloodline of a dangerously good fighting bull. The odds of a bull surviving are about one in one thousand, and even then the bull may die later as a result of the injuries it has received.

The emotional content of the contest is all about anger. The matadors red cape gave rise to the expression “seeing red” as a way to describe an angry reaction. In the case of the bull, an animal that is essentially color-blind, it is a meaningless stage prop. But for the human audience engaged by the spectacle, the bulls anger at being assaulted, stabbed, prodded, and baited—that is the essence of this form of entertainment.

Matadors: The First True Angertainers?

Spectators. An entourage of supporting spear bearers and attackers. An enemy who is set up to be slaughtered. The true star, the protagonist Matador: the first great angertainer?

If we compare historic matadors with today’s angertainers, does the comparison hold up?

It is all theatre. Ritualized blood sport. Seeing red. Overture. Sideshows. Intermissions. We know what the outcome will be (most of the time). As when attending a church, there is ritual.

The difference between bullfighting and angertainment is the target—the “bull” that the angertainer faces today is some combination of political figures, political groups, other groups or organizations, celebrities, or other individuals who—with the proper amount of stage management—can be propped up and slaughtered. These “enemies” may be real or they may be imagined. The activity that has caused them to come to the attention of the angertainment industry may be real, such as an election, or it may be imaginary. Conspiracy theories and simple name calling (socialists, communists, etc.) are a part of the show.

The goal of the angertainer in every instance is to “take down” the enemy. The emotional content is centered on fear and anger. The target will be virtually speared and goaded, and ultimately executed—all for the pleasure of an audience of loyal spectators.

Bloodlust alone is not enough to explain the power of Angertainment, Inc. in America today. Another cultural phenomenon has arisen that has increased the appeal and profitability of angertainment.

The Rise of Spectator Sports

The evolution of spectator sports plays a significant role in understanding the power of angertainment. The success of spectator sports as a media product provided a business template for Angertainment, Inc.

Real spectator sports typically are unscripted so the audience doesn’t know how the contest will end. Spectators may have expectations, but those expectations may be upended. “Thats why they play the game,” some commentator will say.

Note: Professional wrestling occupies a special niche in this market. It is a pseudo-spectator sport with scripted action and improvised dialogue with special relevance to the angertainment industry.*

With spectator sports, audiences have a natural tendency to take sides—to decide to express their support for one side or the other. The contestants may be teams or individuals.

The tendency to support one side of the contest or the other may be based on the performance itself. The underdog, coming up big against a well-known adversary provides one sort of script. Two titans clashing; which one will prevail? An aging veteran playing into the twilight of a career—can she prevail one more time?

More frequently in team sports, the supporters will divide themselves by team allegiance. An audience members loyalty to one team or another may be so powerful as to be part of an individual’s self-identity. It may be passed down through generations along with season tickets. It may inspire powerful emotional connections.

Spectator sports have, over the last half century, also demonstrated another extraordinary power: Making money. Spectator sports have become a huge economic force enriching individuals, team owners, auxiliaries, and hangers-on. How did all of this come about? Here we go again, back to the Greeks.

Sports from Greece to Rome

Athletic competition undoubtedly dates back to the earliest days of humankind. Neanderthals may have competed in footraces. Children engaged in sport-like games such as tag. Men wrestled and competed in other ways; who could throw something the furthest or lift the greatest weight.

The historic record shows that the first recorded Olympics took place in Greece in 776 BCE. The running of the first marathon must have had to wait until after 470 BCE and the Battle of Marathon, but certainly there were races, wrestling, and competitions involving flinging things great distances.

These earliest competitions focused on honor and glory of the competitors. The historic records do not say that great throngs of people came to witness the competitions.

The Romans were first to put thousands of people in an arena to witness athletic competitions. Purpose-built arenas like the Roman Colosseum provided a venue for chariot racing and gladiatorial trials of arms. In some instances, blood may have heightened the drama, but clearly there was a sports-like component to the spectacles the Romans staged.

Similarly, we can find proto spectator sports in other parts of the world. There certainly must have been races, bouts, and contests of strength, informal or formal, to claim bragging rights. The record shows that there were “games” in which the inhabitants of one village faced off with the inhabitants of another. We can find records of ancient precursors to soccer and basketball. As the art of war evolved, so too did competitions in feats of arms; jousting, fencing, archery, and the like.

When these kinds of competitions occurred, there must have been spectators. But the business of attracting spectators had not yet fully developed.

In theatre, the spectator was integral. Similarly bear baiting and similar spectacles relied on “drawing a crowd.” Likely, they also encouraged gambling; wagers on who would win or last the longest, or survive. In the greater part though, the closest cousins to todays spectator sports were primarily for the competitors. Yes, there were observers. Gamblers were certainly present on the sidelines. There might have been a raised dais and seats for the lords, ladies, and other notables, but as entertainment for the masses, sporting events had not yet hit their stride.

Spectators Become Important

Real spectator sports—events designed to attract people who would buy tickets, gamble, or part with money in some other way—have early roots in fisticuffs. Bare-knuckle fights. Reports of boxing matches appeared in English newspapers in the late 17th century. England crowned its first bare-knuckle champion, James Figg, in 1719.

Fights were advertised. Newspapers promoted them and reported the results. Champions emerged. Villains as well. And rivalries, real or artificial, were discussed, stoked, and encouraged as part of the experience. All of the essential components of todays spectator sports were present in the boxing arena.

Gambling evolved to become an integral part of spectator sports as well. Pugilists fought for a “purse” that was filled by promoters of the events, but the greater part of the action occurred on the sidelines. In this way, spectator sports were a natural extension of cockfighting, dog fighting, and similar activities. However, with prize fighters, the competitors could talk, trade verbal jabs as well as real blows, and provide another dimension to the entertainment. Western civilization was evolving; developing an entertainment industry. The coarse elements of bear baiting existed side by side with theatre through the early 19th century. Prizefighting raised the entertainment value, substituting men for the fighting animals. While the threat of death was reduced, the audiences engagement with the competitors was greater.

From an entertainment perspective, spectator sports offered a major advantage over the theatre. On stage and in the arena, the central characters played roles. In theatrical presentations, however, the outcome in theatre was predetermined by the dramatist. Theatre performances came to the same predetermined conclusion time after time.

Spectator sports provided many of the same elements: protagonists, antagonists, conflict. However, with sporting events, the outcome was (at least in theory) always in doubt. Champions and challengers, heroic figures and villains, strutted and fretted their time upon the stage. Then, with the added excitement of wagering, spectators could become totally invested in the excitement of the competition.

The ground was prepared in England in the 19th century. All the pieces were in place for a giant branch of the entertainment industry to emerge.

England in 1800

It would be incorrect to say that spectator sports did not have ancient antecedents. Hippodromes in Greece and arenas such as the Colosseum in Rome hosted sporting events such as chariot races. Racing must have been one of the first, most primal sports, echoing our animal fight-or-flight instinct. Whether it was humans racing each other, riders on horseback, or some other form of locomotion, racing provided challenges, excitement, simplicity, and the elegance of an easy-to-determine victor. For most racing, the rules are painfully simple. Get off to a fair start. Follow the course. First across the finish line wins.

The drama could be increased. Hurdles and jumps could be added. Handicaps applied. Additionally, participants and spectators could become further invested in the result by gambling.

Horse racing was a popular pastime in England dating back to the Tudor era circa 1500. The first permanent English race course, Epsom Downs, was established in 1780. And as England, the dominant world power in the 19th Century, rounded into the 19th century, the era of spectator sports truly arrived.

Spectator sports evolved with the industrial revolution. The population in cities and towns swelled with manufacturing workers; a pool of potential ticket buyers and spectators; people with money who might become interested in the entertainment that sporting events might provide. As the middle and upper classes gained wealth, the idea of creating purpose-built facilities for sporting events became feasible. England became the first hotbed for spectators who wanted to cheer for the success of their teams.

Lords Cricket Ground traces its history to May, 1787. The first buildings to support the playing field after it was relocated, were built in 1814. The Pavilion that still stands on the grounds was completed in 1890. Lords is home of the world’s oldest sports museum.

The All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club, home of the Wimbledon tennis tournament, was founded in 1868. Croquet was the primary focus of the club at its inception, but lawn tennis, introduced in 1875, soon became the primary focus of the club. The club hosted its first championship in 1877.

By the turn of the 20th Century, England was well-covered with race tracks, sporting grounds, and football pitches—all featuring accommodations for spectators. That interest spread throughout the British Empire, and to the former colonies in North America as well.

The Saratoga Race Course in Saratoga Springs opened in 1863. Franklin Field in Philadelphia was opened in 1895; Harvard Stadium in 1903. Fenway Park dates back to 1912.

By the middle of the 20th Century, the United States was covered with stadiums, arenas, playing fields, courts, and courses. College sports had grown into a huge industry attracting millions of fans, and the very best of the college athletes went on to perform in professional baseball, football, basketball, and hockey leagues. Tennis, boxing, horse racing, and the quadrennial Olympic games attracted millions of fans.

But, as popular and ubiquitous as spectator sports had grown, it was still in its relative infancy, taking tiny baby steps. Over the next half century, as though injected with powerful steroids, the spectator sports industry would turn into a monster.

Spectator Sports and Television

Money, money, money! Thats what it’s all about.

From the very dawn of the age of television, the decade of the 1950s, spectator sports provided an important programming element. Baseball, football, and basketball games had all been televised by 1950. The Gillette Cavalcade of Sports aired boxing from Madison Square Garden in New York on Friday nights from 1946 through 1960. The pseudo-sport of professional wrestling gained an eager following via television.

Disclaimer: My father, Edward R. Kennedy, worked at the Columbus Citizen newspaper in the late 1940s where he also became involved in early television production. In later years, he said he encouraged the local TV station to televise professional wrestling and took credit for helping decide which wrestlers should win.

Spectator sports and television were made for each other. Sporting events provided hours and hours of content. No scripts were needed, no actors needed to learn lines and rehearse. Sports provided programming that was, at least in those early years, relatively inexpensive to license and easy to produce.

The payoff for the sports and the individual athletes themselves was wide exposure. The largest sporting venues in the world topped out at around 100,000 spectators. Sports on television reached millions. Television spectators, the people who introduced the term “couch potato” to the American lexicon, meant that the television industry could command better prices for advertising.

The athletes themselves benefited as well. Sports provided a path to celebrity and even in the early days, athletes found ways to cash in. They starred in commercials, endorsed products, made personal appearances, and sometimes became actors or sports commentators themselves.

Spectator sports was becoming a big business. But the best was yet to come.

The 21st Century has brought an exponential increase to the financial value of spectator sports. Every element of spectator sporting events is being monetized. Television channels invest enormous sums for the rights to broadcast games. Leagues and teams, both professional and (sort of) amateur, divide up the proceeds. The media companies earn money from their investment by selling commercial sponsorships; old fashioned commercials along with screen crawls, plugs, mentions, and product placements like the brand name logos on football coaches sideline headphones.

Stadiums are emblazoned with sponsors names; every football bowl game seems to have a sponsor associated with it; and players earn vast sums with endorsements. Michael Jordan, considered the wealthiest athlete in the world, earned close to $90 million for playing basketball from 1984 until 2003. He has been paid more than 10 times that sum—over $1 billion—by the athletic gear manufacturer Nike. Numerous reports say that Jordan earns $150 million annually from Nike today—nearly twice as much as he earned for playing basketball.

The monetization of sports has transformed the world of athletes and agents. The old value system of sports has been altered. Teamwork, team loyalty, the virtues of hard work, and importance of fair play certainly still exist, especially in low-level amateur competitions. But as soon as athletes gain any notoriety, they are drawn into a new world where name recognition can be translated into financial rewards and everyone in the high-level ecosystem wants to figure out how to get paid as much as possible.

The world of pre-professional sports has been turned upside down with the arrival of NIL (Name Image Licensing) for American college athletes. In the new college sports world, a would-be college athlete can receive a commitment of $1 million in NIL money before enrolling in a university. The money game is filtering down to high school and perhaps earlier. Professional soccer academies begin snapping up talent when players are in their early teens.

Games have become media content, and they are altered, as necessary, to make them more television-friendly. Rules are changed to accommodate commercials. Contests are scheduled for the convenience of television broadcasters, often in conflict with the best interests of the athletes and team supporters who attend the games in person. Athletes are entertainers while playing their games or any time between games.

Not all of these kinds of sponsorships are mega deals. There are scraps as well; the Old State U. offensive line may earn a few hundred dollars apiece from a local burger joint plus free meals for mentions on social media, for example. Players may earn modest sums for signing gear at shows. A benchwarmer may earn something when a team signs an NIL deal with a video game manufacturer.

Spectator sports have become a constant presence in modern American life—available 24/7 on cable television channels and via streamers. This huge business is also integral to the growth and popularity of legalized sports betting. In some of the most controversial sponsorship arrangements, universities—through their official athletic fundraising arms—are partnering with online gambling businesses. The deal: encourage university alumni (and students who are old enough) to place their bets with the official university bookmaker.

Why is all of this important? How does the world of modern spectator sports intersect with politics and the angertainment industry?

It begins with one simple reality. A lot of money is being spent in the spectator sports industry. The people who are spending this money are not throwing it away. They are getting something back. In fact, they are getting something extremely valuable. They are getting people’s attention. And they get people’s attention by focusing on the most important part of modern sports: Winning or losing.

In 1906 the sportswriter Grantland Rice ended his poem Alumnus Football with the following lines.

For when the One Great Scorer comes
To mark against your name,
He writes—not that you won or lost—
But how you played the game.

Would anyone say such a foolish thing today? Probably not, and certainly if they were playing the angertainment game.

Supporters & Fans

In England, the people who root for the home team are generally known as supporters. In the United States, however, the typical word for someone who cares about a sports team is “fan.”

The word fan, used in relation to followers of a sports team, appears in the United States in 1889. The word fan is likely to have been coined as a shortened version of the word “fanatic.” (Lexicographers say the term might have been rooted in the word fancy: as in someone who “fancies” a person, sport, or team. Fanatic seems a lot more appropriate for modern breed of sports fan.)

By the middle of the 20th century, fan was a well-established term. Celebrities lived in a world of fan mail, fan clubs, and fan magazines. The followers of sports teams were the fans in the stands. Residents of big cities that hosted more than one professional baseball team divided themselves into loyal factions; New York Giants fans had no use for the Brooklyn Dodger faithful; and they all hated people who rooted for the Yankees.

That same kind of partitioning has occurred everywhere. Alumni of Auburn University and the University of Alabama lived at the heart of a great football rivalry. Over time, residents throughout the state—even if they were not alumni—became fans of one side or the other. These kinds of rivalries grew everywhere: Michigan and Ohio State, Duke and North Carolina; Yankees and Red Sox.

Rivalries are one of the great pleasures of sports. Reporters and commentators may talk about the “hated” rivals and conjure up animosity; but for the most part the competitors enjoy rivalry games as a heightened moment of competition. A rivalry game may even be a way to salvage a season. A team may lose every preceding game before upsetting a rival and end the season feeling like big winners. Even a tie game can feel like a victory, as when undefeated Harvard met an undefeated Yale team in 1969. The game ended in a 29-29 tie score when Harvard scored 16 points in the final 42 seconds. The headline in the Harvard Crimson newspaper the next day said “Harvard Beats Yale 29-29.”

Rivalries emphasize the binary nature of sports competition. Two individuals or two teams face each other with the expectation that there will be one of two outcomes. One will win and one will lose. There are sports such as soccer in which a tie (draw) is a frequent outcome. In that, soccer is an outlier. Spectators don’t like ties; and most sports, over the years, have developed tie-breakers, to eliminate or at least minimize the number games or matches that end in a draw. Most sports: one will win and one will lose.

Good and Bad Rivalries

Most sports rivalries, on the whole, fall into a basket that we can think of as good rivalries. The rivalry heightens the competition and interest in a game; the competition is primarily for “bragging rights” for another year, and at the end of the day, the teams supporters have amicable relationships with each other.

The Army-Navy football rivalry stands nearly in a class by itself as a good—even a great—rivalry. The competition is fierce, the student bodies attend the game en masse, the atmosphere is electric. It’s not a contest between future professional players; merely a spirited competition between very good players who, in the not too distant future, will be comrades in arms defending their country.

The most remarkable part of the Army-Navy rivalry comes at the end of the game. No matter the score, the teams gather in front of one student body and sing their alma mater. Then they go to the other teams student body section, and sing the other schools alma mater. It’s a ritual, a tradition; and it says a lot about how a rivalry can encompass a wonderful set of human virtues.

Spectator sports in general as consumed today, however, tend to push rivalries in a different direction. With other exacerbating factors such as alcohol and gambling, sports rivalries and spectator sports in general, can produce a very different, ugly aftermath.

Rivalries, even good rivalries, place the participants on opposite sides of a great divide. You, your champion, the team you support—are the protagonists in a drama. They are the “good guys.” The other side becomes, by definition, antagonists. They are your adversaries. They are “bad guys.”

In televised rivalries fueled by weeks of hype, wagering, and alcohol, a friendly competition for bragging rights can morph into gloating and taunting. On the losing side, disappointment can fester, become an open wound, and turn into an angry infection.

There are even some fans who, no matter what the outcome of the competition, choose to remain angry and want to cause destruction and disruption. Soccer has been beset with the problem of “hooliganism” since the very earliest days of the sport. Relatively small groups of male fans, sometimes known as firms or ultras—attend games fully prepared for brawls and riots. These fans (true fanatics) provoke fights before, during, and after matches. Their behavior leads to additional unruly conduct from other fans and can cause panics in the stands. As a result, dozens and even hundreds of people have been killed with many more spectators injured at soccer games.

An incident in 1985 sparked by English hooligans at a stadium in Brussels left 39 people dead. As a result, the European Union of Football Associations (UEFA) banned all English clubs from its important annual championship tournament for five years.

Fan violence in the wake of a championship—sometimes even after a win—occurs in the United States with some frequency. The threat of bodily harm at games is much lower in the U.S., but there are still high levels of animosity that lead to violence and vandalism.

In one example, an Alabama football fan named Harvey Updyke used a powerful herbicide to kill two 80-year-old live oak trees on the Auburn University campus because Auburn fans celebrated wins in their rivalry by “rolling them”—draping the trees with toilet paper. After serving a little more than two months in jail, Updyke gave an explanation for his actions in a radio interview. “I wanted Auburn people to hate me as much as I hate them.”

Spectator sports, fueled by rivalries, gambling, alcohol, social media, and incessant media coverage have put the fanatic back into the fan.