Recreational drug use at sports events in the US and UK

Recreational drug use among sports fans has received relatively little scholarly attention. Nonetheless, understanding this landscape is crucial to better understand fan behaviors and attitudes, as well as to support fan communities through effective harm reduction and educational initiatives. Addressing this gap, we surveyed fans in the US (football, baseball, basketball, ice hockey) and the UK (soccer, rugby, cricket) to assess the prevalence, correlates, contexts, and motivations behind drug use at major sporting events (N = 2,556). Fans reported more drug use than the general population, with significantly more use in the US (22.9%) than in the UK (6.5%), where there was more alcohol consumption. There were no significant differences for drug use at games between sports in the US, yet in the UK, soccer (8.9%) and rugby (8.3%) fans reported more use than cricket fans (2.2%). Drug types, motivations for use, and demographic correlates of use were broadly consistent across sports, whereas the role of collective identities was distinct according to national context. In the UK, team bonding was associated with both drug use and support of sanctions for drugs at games, aligning with a carnivalesque interpretation of fan behavior, where temporary suspension of broader social norms may coexist with internal group regulation. In the US, by contrast, team bonding was unrelated to drug-taking, with divergent effects on support for sanctions suggesting tensions between inclusive group norms and efforts to police in-group transgressions. Findings point to a need for tailored harm reduction and educational initiatives: we suggest that acknowledging drug use as part of fan culture could inform targeted interventions to reduce shame and better prioritize education, safety, and well-being within sports communities.