Watching a football match is a physical act. On matchdays, significant variation in physiological markers (such as raised heart rate) are observed (Elder et al., 1991). Testosterone (regardless of gender) (Burk et al., 2019), and cortisol is released; the extent of secretion may correlate with devotion to the team (Newson et al., 2020) (see Figure 1). Matches are associated with adverse cardiovascular events (thankfully still rarely), particularly when a team loses (Wang et al., 2020).

Spectatorship is an embodied experience in which meaning is produced through empathetic immersion with the players. Think of the crowds’ reaction when a striker leaps up to head a perfectly placed cross: everyone synchronously nods their head in sympathetic encouragement. Indeed, neuroimaging studies have shown that areas of the motor cortex are activated by watching sports (Beilock et al., 2008). This may be due to mirror neurons, those which activate whilst witnessing others perform tasks. Mirror neurones have evolved in relation to culturally-transmitted skill learning, as well as the foundation of empathy via the mapping of other-related information onto self-related brain networks (Bonini et al., 2022).

Being part of a matchday crowd can be described as a form of ritual (Xygalatas, 2022). By one understanding, rituals are the performance of a series of actions or gestures which have an inherent, culturally-determined meaning, but do not produce an appreciable effect on the external world (Graf, 2012). Rituals are likely to have arisen early in, or prior to, the evolution of Homo sapiens and are a human universal (McNamara, 2022), suggesting that they have had adaptive significance (Rossano, 2015).

Evidence for ritual behaviour appears in our evolutionary past: the peoples inhabiting Britain in the neolithic period trekked for hundreds of miles for winter feasts at Stonehenge (Madgwick et al., 2019). Sacred locality was seemingly as important to our ancestors as it is to football fans today, where the sense of place (i.e., the stadium) is indelibly linked to the sometimes profoundly emotional memories of matches (Bairner, 2014).

Rituals can unify and strengthen group bonds as well as exciting individuals in an ecstatic togetherness; Durkheim proposed the term “collective effervescence” to describe this phenomenon (Durkheim, 1912). Part of the experience of watching football in a stadium is behavioural synchrony (e.g., chanting, cheering, and jeering in unison) which arises within a highly charged atmosphere. For example, singing and chanting (often to the beat of a drum) is commonplace in football stadiums. Chanting can be one way of affirming identity to the club (Clark, 2006). The evolutionary history of singing (to a drumbeat) likely has ancient origins, perhaps even arising before the development of language (Rafferty et al., 2023).

Research has suggested that the psychophysiological arousal experienced in such collective settings is associated with the release of endogenous opioids (Charles et al., 2020). Synchrony may act as a direct means of enhancing group cohesion via the release of such neurohormones that influence social bonding (Tarr et al., 2017). This can explain its recurrence throughout diverse human cultures and contexts (e.g., dance, prayer, marching, music-making, and sport) which provide an alternative to social bonding mechanisms such as grooming, which are prevalent in other great apes (Launay et al., 2016).

The psychophysiological response to ritual also promotes “identity fusion,” whereby individuals’ person and social identities merge (Páez et al., 2015; Lang et al., 2017). In football, a fan becomes identified with the (largely anonymous) crowd of fellow supporters in the stadium and beyond (Newson et al., 2023). The match itself is necessary, in that it scaffolds the experience (just as a religious ritual is necessary to bind the congregation), but it is not in itself sufficient for the formation of fanaticism, which requires the presence of a crowd (Dunbar, 2022).

Simple ritualised behaviours can serve to reduce anxiety (Lang et al., 2015). This is best illustrated by obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), in which an affected individual may feel a compulsion to perform repeated ritualised behaviours to resolve an obsession or anxious thought (Moulding and Kyrios, 2006). Provoking anxiety in healthy individuals can also spontaneously induce ritualistic behaviour; as with OCD, uncomfortable feelings of uncertainty may motivate individuals to seek order through the performance of a familiar, repetitive act (Lang et al., 2015).

Larger social rituals may arise or become more prominent in challenging periods, such as in times of resource stress. As an example, rainmaking rituals are practiced across cultures, particularly in times of drought (Murray and Xing, 2020). Rituals may help to convince a group that they are exerting control over a situation, which serves to resolve uncomfortable uncertainty. Rituals may therefore improve psychological wellbeing, and are employed in transcultural settings as a healing process, particularly when there is limited access to mainstream psychiatric services (Sax, 2014; Xygalatas et al., 2019).

Matchday crowds perform ritualistic acts which may serve to help resolve anxiety around the unpredictability of the result. Furthermore, football may represent an unusual case whereby the ritual does make a small but significant difference (Pollard, 2006a). Research on the “home advantage” phenomenon (most teams perform better at home, where there are more of their own supporters), have suggested that partisan crowds do lead to increased goals for home teams and increased yellow cards for away teams (Pollard, 2006b). Systematic analysis of the crowd-less “ghost games” played without spectators in the COVID-19 pandemic suggests that lack of a crowd decreases this home advantage (Leitner et al., 2023).

Football matches may therefore induce all the psychophysical benefits of ritual, but may be even more satisfying because the ritual behaviour does increase the chances of their team winning. The responsibility for this is shared across the crowd of fans, so as not to be burdensome to any one individual. In the era of social prescribing, the putative psychophysical benefits of social ritual warrants further research (Fixsen and Polley, 2020).

Humans are tribalistic social animals who spontaneously form groups with complex, bonded relationships. The Social Brain Hypothesis proposes that the human neocortex evolved and enlarged in part to cope with the cognitive demands of such intricate relationships (Dunbar, 2016). Evolutionary pressures likely selected for the sharing of knowledge and experience, as well as the pooling of resources, which is adaptive at the group level (Henrich, 2015).

Humans can become biased towards ingroups and antagonistic towards outgroups, classically illustrated by the 1954 Robber’s Cave experiment, and since replicated in various forms (Berkowitz and Sherif, 1967). In football, this tendency leads to the partisan support of one’s own team (the ingroup) which is viewed favourably in comparison to rival teams (the outgroups).

Humans may develop biased perceptions which favour members of ingroups, at the preconscious as well as conscious level (Molenberghs et al., 2013) (Figure 2). Understood via the Bayesian or predictive processing model of perception, ingroup status may alter neuronal “priors,” which biases perception towards the ingroup (Moradi et al., 2015). This enables individuals to heuristically predict, rather than simply respond to, their social environment (Pezzulo et al., 2022; Seth, 2021). Heuristic predictions may be adaptive, as they require less cognitive effort in comparison to considering all available information (Gigerenzer and Gaissmaier, 2011).

Football fans are notoriously biassed towards their own teams (Na et al., 2019), as evidenced by perceptions of the number of fouls committed (Hastorf and Cantril, 1954), and overall contribution of their team to a match (Huff et al., 2017). Being a fan may increase the strength and precision of prior beliefs about the team (e.g., our players tackle fairly); correspondingly, sensory evidence (e.g., visual input of a tackle) is given less relative weight in the resultant Bayesian modelling, which leads to “posteriors” (conscious experience of the tackle) not being updated to the same degree as they would be in an unbiassed spectator. For worked examples of this phenomenon (please see Figure 2).

The strongest rivalries between fanbases tends to happen in the context of crowded resource niches. This may be competition for support (e.g., local derbies), or for trophies. Sigmund Freud’s concept of the “narcissism of small differences”—the more a relationship or community shares commonalities, the more likely the people in it are to engage in interpersonal feuds and mutual ridicule—seems a particularly apt description (Freud, 1930).

Fans of rival clubs have a particular tendency to experience schadenfreude – pleasure at others’ misfortune. This is a complicated emotion with a social dimension. Schadenfreude has been shown, including in studies of football fans, to be associated with the strengthening of ingroup identification, particularly in times of hardship (i.e., following losses), suggesting an adaptive social role for the emotion (Hoogland et al., 2015; Leach and Spears, 2009). The degree to which schadenfreude should be tolerated or encouraged is a question with complex ethical ramifications.

All ingroups, including communities, gatherings, and professions (as well as football fans), develop a specific vocabulary and means of referring to objects or concepts which can serve as shorthand, but can also signal ingroup membership and obfuscate concepts from outsiders (Efferson et al., 1979). Slang, lingo, and shibboleths (such as player nicknames, “in-joke” chants, and particular fashion styles) may serve as signifiers which maintain distinctions. Overt displays of support, for example costly journeys to away matches, may have evolutionary origins as means of displaying devotion to a group via self-sacrifice (De Dreu et al., 2014).

Seen through an evolutionary lens, these ingroup markers may serve to encourage parochial altruism, and facilitate the detection of outgroup individuals and “freeloaders.” Humans are attuned to social behaviour within groups and can become frustrated when freeloaders attempt to extract benefits from a group they are perceived not to have contributed to (Avilés, 2002). There is some (albeit weak) evidence, including from research on football fans, that parochial altruism may be regulated by the hormone oxytocin (de et al., 2010; Luo et al., 2019; Schiller et al., 2020). Oxytocin administration has been suggested as a treatment for altered social functioning in numerous psychiatric disorders including autistic spectrum disorder, schizophrenia, borderline personality disorder, and social anxiety disorders (De Dreu and Kret, 2016).

Since antiquity, sports have been compared to battle, with a particular emphasis on attributes such as aggression, strength, and ruthlessness (Lombardo, 2012). War, too, has been a common metaphor in football, partly due to its association with unsavoury incidents of crowd violence (Mangan, 2004).

Hooliganism at football matches remains an occasional issue. There are some suggestions that hooliganism may be associated in some cases with untreated neurodevelopmental and mental health disorders (Smith et al., 2024; van Ham et al., 2022). There is also a replicated body of data to suggest that some international tournament matches are associated with increased alcohol consumption and incidents of alcohol-related domestic violence (Trendl et al., 2021).

Nevertheless, the experience of most fans is not one of violence, and disorder is perpetrated by a minority. There are issues with stigmatising all football fans as inherently violent (File and Worlledge, 2023), and the evolutionary history of human intergroup competition suggests that cooperation is at least as important as aggression (evidence suggests this applies to football fans too) (Newson et al., 2023).

Indeed, there are emerging data to suggest that football can serve as a means to build social cohesion. Studies on football (playing, not watching) in the Middle East suggests that it can improve relationships and admixing between players of differing religions (Mousa, 2020). Mohamed Salah, a particularly gifted Muslim footballer who plays for Liverpool, provides another example. Salah often performs sujood (the Muslim act of devotional prostration) after scoring, and his signing for Liverpool was associated with a small reduction in hate crimes in Merseyside, and a halving of Islamophobic tweets from Liverpool fans (Alrababa’h et al., 2021).

The explosion of social media has increased the opportunities for fans to engage with their team via the internet (a phenomenon sometimes called “digital fandom”). This undoubtedly increases connections between fans, and maximises exposure to media and opinion about football. But football discourse on social media is not without problems, and there have been repeated reports of abuse (including racist abuse) of players or other fans, perpetrated by online social media users behind a cloak of anonymity (Kilvington and Price, 2019).

Evolutionary theories around social media tend to emphasise the problems of environmental mismatch, whereby social media is designed to co-opt innate mechanisms of our socially-orientated brains, leading to repeated, and sometimes harmful, use. Transient rewards from “Likes” and online interactions belies an overwhelming social landscape which we are ill-adapted to. Harmful social media use has been associated with low mood, poor self-esteem, and behavioural addiction; for a detailed evolutionarily-informed discussion of social media use, please refer to Lim and Tan, 2024.

Many football fans end up supporting the same football team as family members, particularly if they are taken to games as a child. It is self-evident that children have evolved an innate tendency to copy the behaviours, mannerisms, and preferences of their primary caregivers, and this often applies to football too.

Humans are unique in that emotional development continues far after birth, and is influenced by cultural learning (Savina and Wan, 2017; Michalska and Davis, 2019). Watching football matches with peers and adults may represent a rite-of-passage for some children, a means by which both collective and individual emotional development occurs, perhaps through the generation of emotionally-salient memories (Bairner, 2014) and the freedom to behave with less restriction on emotional and physical expression than in other areas of life (Pringle, 2004).

For older fans, this may result in bittersweet nostalgia, an emotion which saturates football. Nostalgia was first described in medical literature in the 17th Century (Anspach, 1934), however its ubiquity suggests a deeper evolutionary past. The solid, unchanging history of a football club can become one of the emblems by which a fan group reaffirms its identity in the face of the uncertain and unpredictable future. Nostalgia may have adaptive function through fostering optimism and the buffering of adverse experiences (Yang et al., 2023). Nostalgia has been utilised in new therapeutic paradigms, for example in reminiscence therapy for dementia, which can explicitly focus on sporting memories, including of football (Coll-Planas et al., 2017; Sass et al., 2021).

During a football match there is a constant building up and letting down of emotions, and expectations are frustrated at least as often than they are rewarded. Football, for many, often means defeat and disappointment. Despite this, football fans, as is the case with humans generally (Soper, 2021), have a particular tendency to show optimism bias (Massey et al., 2011), a rose-tinted view of the world which may have important evolutionary underpinnings for motivation in the face of adversity.

The idea that football fans “cut off reflected failure” by identifying with their club less following defeat was suggested in older literature (Snyder et al., 1986). Nevertheless, there is counter-evidence, suggesting fans are more likely to “sacrifice” themselves for the sake of other fans of their team (the ingroup) after a defeat (Newson et al., 2023; Whitehouse et al., 2017). Perhaps this could be named the “doubling down after a defeat” effect: the shared agony of losing games glues fans together as much as the collective ecstasy of wins (Newson et al., 2023; Whitehouse et al., 2017). This may have important evolutionary underpinnings, whereby strengthening bonds within a group is particularly important in times of hardship.

Nevertheless, very strong identity fusion with a football club may sometimes be maladaptive (‘negative over-identification’), and may have arguably too significant an effect on mood and wellbeing. Defeats, even if routine, may affect overall mental wellbeing, with higher identifying fans experiencing anger as well as sadness (Crisp et al., 2007). There is some (weak) evidence that clinically significant low mood can occur in fans after their team is relegated (Banyard and Shevlin, 2001).