https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0377-3271
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ABSTRACT
I argue that sports clubs should be punished for bad behaviour by their fans in a way that affects the club’s sporting success: for example, we are justified in imposing points deductions and competition disqualifications on the basis of racist chanting. This is despite a worry that punishing clubs in such a way is unfair because it targets the sports team rather than the fans who misbehaved. I argue that this belies a misunderstanding of the nature of sports clubs and of the nature of sporting success. Further, I argue that fans should want to be held responsible in such a way because it vindicates the significant role that they play in the life of their club.
Acknowledgement
Several anonymous reviewers generously provided very helpful feedback on versions of this paper. Thanks also to Hannah Davis, Chris McMullan, and Chip Sheffield for discussing some of the key ideas in this paper.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Correction Statement
This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.
Notes
1. I will not consider any punishments that should be directed to individual fans as part of the criminal justice system.
2. My emphasis on that agent is to highlight what I will later call the ‘Desert Problem’: that the person who is punished should be the person who committed the wrong; but it is also important in distinguishing punishment from related concepts like scapegoating. For a useful survey of the nature of punishment, see Brooks (Citation2012). Further, the agent must be culpable, i.e. not justified or excused. This is not pertinent to our discussion given that the examples I explore, of racist chanting, will not (in any realistic scenario) be justified or excused.
3. (Brooks Citation2012, 2–5). But Leo Zaibert also allows that punishment can be inflicted by agents other than the state, and by those who have no authority (Zaibert Citation2005, 231–36); this will not concern us.
4. I hope that this is an uncontroversial application of ‘punishment’. But I want to note that, even if one disputes the exact contours of the concept of punishment, the features I appeal to (suffering imposed for wrongdoing by an authority) are likely to be present at least in the core of any concept of punishment even if there is debate at the margins.
5. Victor Tadros notes that it might be true that fairness dictates that punishment needs to be deserved yet we need not accept the retributivist idea that deserved suffering is morally good (Tadros Citation2012, 165–165). I agree, and my point is just that fairness dictates punishment must be deserved.
6. To put this another way: the concept of punishment is such that it is suffering inflicted in response to an agent’s wrongdoing, the justification of punishment is a separate question concerning why we should respond in such a way.
7. Fines—paid by the club—are, more often than not, nominal punishments. I will not discuss them. If severe enough, they could be considered a form of success-directed punishment.
8. Thanks to an anonymous reviewer for pointing out that in the NHL (National Hockey League), teams can be punished in-game (with a player having to sit out for a period of time) for fans throwing objects onto the ice (Rule 63.3, National Hockey League Official Rules Citation2018–2019). This would be another example of success-directed punishment. Thanks also to Matt Hernandez for a helpful discussion about hockey.
9. Of course, the specifics matter. It matters how wrongful the behaviour was, it matters whether there is an excuse or a justification, my point here is just that wrongful behaviour is the sort of behaviour that can deserve punishment, and if fans engage in wrongful behaviour, we might be justified in punishing them.
10. Compare the discussion at (Jones Citation2003, 46–47).
11. My later argument does not require us to reject the Control Argument. The fact that a subset is part of a greater whole does not entail that we cannot also see the subset as a distinct subset within that whole; much as we might judge parents on their failure to control their children, we might judge the family as a whole. Much as fans are part of the club (as I will argue), there are still executive elements of the club that we might judge (and, in this case, punish) because it fails to control the fans. Thanks to an anonymous reviewer for urging me to think about this further.
12. There are also clearly relationships between fans, and the fans form a community; for a detailed discussion see Tarver (Citation2017). I will not discuss this.
13. Mumford’s claim concerns the community of observers, but it is clear that fans will be centrally important to the identity of many clubs.
14. The argument does not apply to fans of individual sportspeople, for we do not plausibly suppose that fans of individual sportspeople constitute that sportsperson (see Mumford Citation2004, 193).
15. Thanks to several anonymous reviewers for urging me to clarify what sort of ‘identity’ I had in mind.
16. Our ethical identities can be understood as versions of our numerical identities, my point is that this is very different from the traditional metaphysical notion of numerical identity, and my argument turns around the fact that ethical identities are part of the character or nature of a club.
17. For an elegant discussion of the ‘core’ metaphor, see Dan-Cohen (Citation1991). It may also be that an ethical identity is somehow conflicted. In our instance, it may be that there are prominent racist fans and prominent anti-racist fans. This is an interesting complication that I will not explore.
18. For further discussion of practices, see Tarver (Citation2017).
19. For this point, see Mumford (Citation2004, 187–88).
20. One could apply the principle to other elements of a club: owners, players, and various other stakeholders might be a part of a club’s ethical identity. The importance of owners to, say, American teams might lead to a related argument: racist behaviour by owners might rightly redound to the cost of the club. This might be more plausible than in, say, certain English football clubs where owners are often relatively aloof. Further, we should also allow that certain fan practices shape the club’s ethical identity in a positive way. My focus is on punishment, but we should not view fans only through a negative lens.
21. Let us also stipulate that they do not belong even to a particular amateur club, or if they do the club persists on a season-by-season basis.
22. This can be understood in terms of a broader narrative (see MacIntyre Citation1977, Citation2007, chap., 15). For a vibrant study of Barcelona in particular, see Lowe (Citation2013).
23. Had Messi played elsewhere, his success would have to be understood in that other context.
24. I will say more about this below and clarify what sort of behaviour might licence success-directed punishments.
25. In such cases, we might be able to justify success-directed punishment via the Control Argument.
26. A lone wolf, or a series of lone wolves, might behave in abominable ways and if other fans fail to condemn this then they might be implicated in the creation of a racist atmosphere that affects the club’s ethical identity and thus is deserving of success-directed punishment. Thanks to a reviewer for pressing the problem of lone wolves.
27. For discussions along these lines see Appiah (Citation2007, 68–69); Witt (Citation2011, 23–24, 72–73); Nelson (Citation2002, 30–33); Schechtman (Citation2014, chaps. 5–6).
28. Thanks to an anonymous reviewer and Chip Sheffield for raising this point.