It is commonly believed that Super Bowl Sunday triggers a surge in gender-based violence (GBV). But is this true? That may not be the most important question we should be asking.
GBV is a persistent and widespread reality both globally and in the United States. Each year, an estimated 5 to 7.5 million physical assaults are committed against adult women by their intimate partners. Additionally, approximately 1,500 women in the U.S. are killed by their husbands or intimate partners annually—an average of five per day.
Factually we know that National Football League Sunday football games are some of the highest-rated programs for 18–49-year-old men in the US. The addition of Amazon Prime football, Thursday night football thus added to Monday night football and the regular Sunday football games – results in a lot of football being watched by boys and men and an ever-growing number of girls and women once we factor in the Taylor Swift phenomena. [2]
These same boys and men also spend an inordinate amount of time with violent NFL video games, football fantasy leagues and rape fantasy pornography.
Researchers have told us that these men also revert to lonely silos and become part of “underground” incels (DeKeseredy, 2026):
Indeed, we are now seeing the rapid development of patriarchal online communities (e.g., incels) with members who never come into face-to-face contact with each other but frequently exchange misogynistic written, audio, and visual communication with their peers.
Why then would Superbowl Sunday (SBS) as a label, a brand, be exempt from the mix of violence against women that takes place daily? Why does the NFL and others push so hard to exempt the super payday –SBS—from being seen/known as a day to publicize violence against women and its relation to the sport of football?
Though there has always been an active resistance to discussing the relationship between sports and gender-based violence, this is exacerbated in two important ways in the current political climate.
First, surveys like the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS) tells us that fewer than 50% of victims report the violence against them. Rather than focusing on myths, efforts should be directed toward upping the number of reports made as well as addressing and preventing the ongoing crisis of intimate partner violence. This will be challenging now that the Center for Disease Control, is no longer able to collect or report data on any form of GBV.
Second, even if we can get an accurate measure of the GBV that is occuring every day, and especially on SBS, we are concerned that those being harmed will be able to find the resources they need. With recent decisions that have eliminated federal resources, we do know that only a small percentage of domestic violence programs have the resources to offer legal representation to survivors (https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2024/09/17/crime-victims-fund-cuts/)
In concluding this essay I want to reiterate my main point: Academic research linking domestic violence to a major sporting event like the Superbowl faces heightened skepticism (Hill-Collins and Bilge, 2020; Forsdike, O’Sullivan, and Hooker, 2022). This resistance is not surprising given that (1) a league that also denies links between concussions and later in life cognitive decline and (2) a society that downplays intimate partner violence, a significantly underreported issue, while simultaneously protecting and excusing male-dominated institutions like the NFL. This institution has a long, persistent history of domestic abuse cases as is documented in our unique database which has hundreds of these violent incidents (https://smithandhattery.com/gbv/).
Notes:
1 Earl Smith, PhD, Research Scientist, Center for the Study and Prevention of Gender Based Violence, Women and Gender Studies Department, University of Delaware. smuithea@udel.edu
2 It can be confusing when football is aired. Add in special games {Thanksgiving}, the new Amazon sponsored games and the already established days the games air, there is a lot. With the Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce “thing” and a winning Kansas City Chiefs team, women have now signed on to attending and watching as well.
References
Allison, Julie and Viney, Donald. 1996. War, battering, and other sports: The gulf between American men and women. Journal of Men’s Studies, 5(1), 70-73,76-77. Retrieved from https://www.proquest.com/scholarly-journals/war-battering-other-sports-gulf-between-american/docview/222628042/se-2
Card David and Dahl, Gordon. 2011. Family violence and football: the effect of unexpected emotional cues on violent behavior. Quarterly Journal of Economics, 126(1):103-43. doi: 10.1093/qje/qjr001. PMID: 21853617; PMCID: PMC3712874.
DeKeseredy, Walter. 2026. MALE PEER SUPPORT THEORY. forthcoming in Angela Hattery and Earl Smith (ed.) Theories of Family Violence.
Forsdike Kirsty, O’Sullivan Grant and Hooker Leesa. 2022. Major sports events and domestic violence: A systematic review. Health Soc Care Community, 30(6):e3670-e3685. doi: 10.1111/hsc.14028
Gotberg, Krystyna; Wiersma-Mosley, Jacquelyn. 2022. An Empirical Investigation of Violence Against Women in the NFL. Journal of Sport & Social Issues, Vol. 46 Issue 5, p445-457. DOI: 10.1177/01937235211043645
Hill-Collins, Patricia and Sirma Bilge. 2020. Intersectionality, 2nd Edition. Polity.
Silverman, Ellie. 2024. After funding cuts, nonprofits for domestic-violence survivors scale back. Washington Post, https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2024/09/17/crime-victims-fund-cuts/
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