Unsportsmanlike Behavior: Examining Variation in Arrests at National Football League Games

While previous research has explored the relationship between sporting events and crime in larger geographic spaces, research has not comprehensively examined how characteristics of sporting events influence arrests made inside stadiums themselves. Using a dataset of police records encompassing several seasons of the National Football League (NFL), this study explores how individual game characteristics influence the number of arrests made by police within the confines of the stadiums and stadium parking lots. Grounded in the routine activities theory, multilevel regression models suggest that certain game characteristics can influence the number of arrests made at a game.