Kiernan Gordon, Associate Professor of Sport Leadership & Management, co-authored a paper with Gidon Jakar (University of Florida) entitled, “Crime in the nominal city: An examination of the relationship between criminal incidents and professional sport venues in Dallas, Texas”, that was recently published in the International Journal of Sport Management. The paper continues the collaborative research of Gordon and Jakar, who, in this project. studied time periods before, during, and after the delivery of games played by teams in the four, major, professional sport leagues in the Dallas Metroplex from January 2015 through December 2019. Of particular interest is the phenomenon whereby the home venues of major professional sport franchises are increasingly located in communities beyond the team’s nominal city.
Interestingly, the authors found in their analysis an apparent decrease in the number of reported criminal incidents in Dallas when the NFL’s Cowboys play, whether home or away, without an uptick in crime afterwards. This suggests that a specific segment of the viewing population, who might otherwise engage in criminal activity, may consume Cowboys games in some way, either in-person at the stadium (for home games), with others in the area, or in their own home. This segment, potentially a ‘captive audience’, appears to consist of individuals who would otherwise commit various types of crimes in Dallas but who watch the Cowboys play instead with, as the data indicate, no subsequent spike in criminal activity post-event. This may enable the NFL, the Cowboys franchise, and/or local authorities to engage with this audience through messaging and area programming to promote prosocial behavior and denounce crime. While the presence of elite sport venues generally lead to a variety of unintended negative consequences, as the research of Jakar and Gordon have previously demonstrated, this study suggests a positive unintended consequence of elite stadium construction and event delivery.