New study of risks within football and fandom in Europe

Eivind Å. Skille
Department of Public Health and Sport Sciences, University of Inland Norway

I would like to start by thanking the Editor of idrottsforum.org for the opportunity to review the book Insecurities in European Football and Supporter Cultures, authored by Jan Andre Lee Ludvigsen and published by Routledge in 2025. Already at this point, I would like to add that it was both a pleasure and a challenge to make up a reasonable opinion about the book. It is very detailed, and I believe (believed at the beginning of the reading at least) that it is fair to hold that the book can be considered a book for ‘the congregation’ or for ‘the nerds’ into the focal research field. Given the topic of security for supporters at football games, to put it simply, it is apparently narrow. However, there is another broader side to it, in which the author manages to contextualize the (apparently narrow) topic into a broader societal phenomenon and to make it interesting in broader sociological terms. His main approach to do that, as I read it, is through the application of three more or less obviously compatible theoretical lenses: Ulrich Beck’s description of risk society, Bourdieu’s idea of a field, and Foucault’s concept of resistance. I will return to this in the comment to the conclusion last in this review, after a presentation of its content.

The author positions the book in an ongoing and current interest in safety among politicians and football organizations. The purpose of the book is to investigate how insecurities in European football have been solved by both European political institutions and football organizations, and at the same time been contested by football supporters. To specify, the author defines three research aims for the book:

1. To revisit the regulatory frameworks that emerged and evolved in European football post-Heysel between 1985 and 2024.
2. To explore the ways in which European football and political authorities define, and have defined, security in football differently.
3. To trace and analyze supporters contestation and resistance toward security policies, practices and definitions across the relevant period (p. 10).

I particularly like the section explaining how labels such as ‘hooligans’, ‘supporters’, ‘customers’, ‘stakeholders’, and ‘political activists’ are crucial to understand the ‘waves’ of evolution in the sociology of football fandom.

In order to shed light on these aims, the author draws on interviews and text analyses; hereunder the author has analyzed legal texts, policy documents and historical football fanzines.

The book is divided into three main parts and seven chapters. In the introduction (Chapter 1), the background for the study and the aims of the research are presented, as per above.

Chapter 2, ‘Football, fandom and supporter cultures’, outlines some of the football sociology literature into fandom since the 1970s and scrutinizes some key concepts in that regard. I particularly like the section that explains how labels such as ‘hooligans’, ‘supporters’, ‘customers’, ‘stakeholders’, and ‘political activists’ are crucial to understanding the ‘waves’ of evolution in the sociology of football fandom.

Then, chapters 3–4 make up part I and the period 1985–2008. In Chapter 3, the author ‘unpacks the theoretical frameworks and relations’ for the book (p. 43) – or at least two of the three theoretical frameworks I would add, namely ‘Beck’s work on risk and the Bourdieu-inspired concept of a “security field”’ (p. 43). I find these denominations intriguing and fruitful, as the author describes how the ‘new man-made risks – induced by capitalist society’ (p. 44) impact football security while simultaneously admitting that ‘full insurance against risk remains impossible’ (p. 44). However, in a further review of the literature in the field from the selected period, the author sketches how institutions and organizations started forming what appears as the security field, especially after ‘the Council of Europe adopted the Convention on Spectator Violence and Misbehavior at Sport Events’ just months after the Heysel tragedy (p. studies 56).

While chapter 3 sketched the establishment of the security field as a response to the particular football supporter challenges of risk society, chapter 4 indicates that there is more than one side of this ‘game’ (which is always the case and much of the point with a Bourdieusian field). The point is that – following Foucault as the author here does – where there is power, there is anti-power, or resistance. The chapter nicely reminds us that a security field is also a field of control, and that there might be problems connected to surveillance. The point is made by British examples, which the author justifies (on page 74); he indicates the intertwined relationships of commodification, commercialization, neoliberalism and security demands (see especially pages 79 and 87), which has had the consequence that football is now for the middle class. If it is something I would like more of, it is an unpacking of these ideas more thoroughly.

Part II, about the period 2008–2022, comprises chapters 5 and 6. Chapter 5 focuses on the main policy of the current situation: the Saint-Denis Convention. The full name is ‘Convention on an Integrated Safety, Security and Service Approach at Football Matches and Other Sports Events’, and it is adopted by the Council of Europe in order to replace the Convention from 1985 (as per chapter 3). Chapter 5 further discusses the ‘level of authority which the Council of Europe possesses in football’ as an ‘initial and external authority’ that can be considered a ‘standard-setting organization’ (p. 103), the football security field in the tension between the football organization’s (UEFA’s) regulations and the policy institutions Council of Europe (see p. 113) and the Council of the EU (see p. 114).

Chapter 5 includes a mention on how supporters are represented to have a voice in the field. Chapter 6 continues on the supporter’s voice and is well entitled ‘Top-down or bottom-up fan engagement? A sociological exploration of supporter liaison officers.’ The chapter is a relatively straightforward continuation regarding the role of supporter liaison officers (SLOs) through an empirically based presentation of the interviewees’ concerns about security (here, interview quotations dominate). I like the empirical elaborations about the SLOs, which can be summarized (as per the title of the chapter) both top-down and bottom-up. ‘The  SLOs are situated in the security field through a series of “top-down” regulatory mechanisms’ and simultaneously ‘that their authority and capital, as needed to shape the field, stem from the “bottom-up”’ (p. 133).

Part III, 2022–2024, consists of chapter 7 ‘Discussion and conclusion’ in which the author returns to the ideas presented at the outset and nicely sums up what the main arguments throughout the book have been. This is great, as are the proposals for future research and the reflections over the kind of implications that the insights from this book could, and perhaps should, initiate. Despite this ‘correctness’, I am left with a slight feeling of ambivalence. This feeling probably stems from some unfulfilled expectations; I think I would have liked to see an ‘elevated analysis’ and thus – say – another closure. To me, that would be something along the lines of bringing together the theoretical approaches, former empirical observations, and the points made. However, readers differ, and this would be my personal preference.

Overall, Insecurities in European Football and Supporter Cultures is a well-written book, which, given the rather narrow topic, actually sheds light on broader societal and cultural issues through the discussion of (in)security in European football. Especially, I like the application of the three theoretical approaches: risk society (Beck), security field (inspired by Bourdieu but very empirically driven in the book), and resistance (Foucault). I also like the way the author relates the focal issues to overarching trends of neoliberalism. As indicated above, this could perhaps be further elaborated upon. Nonetheless, this is a book that I recommend to sport sociologists and political scientists with an interest in football and other sports, as well as in arenas beyond.

Copyright © Eivind Å. Skille 2025