Soccer Violence: Factor and Tackling Mechanism: In the Case of Ethiopia Premier League (Epl)

Abstract

In Ethiopia, soccer violence was sporadic, however; these days, it is
becoming a growing concern and it extended even outside the stadium.
Spectators are reserved to go stadiums in afraid of violence related injuries,
this violence damaging the sociocultural and economy of the country, and it
also affects the image and development of football as a whole. Despite this,
studies were scanty and not properly done.
Thus, the purpose of this study was to examine the causes and it’s tackling
strategies. A cross-sectional descriptive study was conducted among 137
potential respondents since 1st of January2016 to 31 of October, 2017 using
snow ball and stratified random sampling for the qualitative and quantitative
data respectively. The interview was analyzed qualitatively while IBM SPSS
software version 20was applied as a statistical tool for the analysis of
quantitative data. The findings revealed that the chief factors of spectator
violence were found to be multifactorial, however; the root cause emerged
from players; referees; coaches, spectators; clubs fans, football federation;
clubs managers; the media bodies and quality of stadiums. As a means of
tackling mechanism the best remedies are discussing the problems with the
stakeholders; awareness creation and sustainable education of the
communities; strict punishment policy followed by execution of the law are
the major ones besides to identifying the most active place of violence,
traditionally named as “Katanga”.
In conclusion, there is a need to take serious and feasible action on how to
curb the problem and how to ensure sustainable and peaceful tournaments
before it traumatizing the sport families. The federation should improve also
to the quality of stadiums using CCTV and good fence and pay attention on
proactive strategies like education as a big weapon than focusing on reactive
measure