Sports

How to Encourage Positive Crowds at Sporting Events

Stadium Soccer Sport Crowd

The crowd can be one of the best parts of a sporting event. Many athletes find that they play better when they have a great crowd to encourage them. Even boos and taunts from an opposing team’s fans can be helpful for motivating athletes.

In fact, many athletes found that not having crowds in the stands during the Covid pandemic had a negative effect on their performance. They just didn’t feel as driven to perform without a crowd.

However, crowds can also have negative effects on a game. Crowds can get into fights with one another or move onto the field to start arguments with referees or players. Controlling the crowd and encouraging them to have a positive effect on sports teams and games can be a challenge. Here are a few tactics for encouraging positive crowd control.

Make Good Use of Barricades

A high-quality metal barricade is absolutely essential for crowd control. Good barricades are easy to quickly organize into whatever way you like. You can adjust them as needed to control a crowd in the moment. They also make it very easy for you to hang billboards to help direct crowds or encourage appropriate behavior.

Tell Crowds Know What You Want

It may seem obvious that you want crowds to remain respectful and not charge onto the field, but telling them so ahead of a game can actually be very helpful in controlling their behavior. It may be even more effective to have crowds verbally agree or even sign a waiver declaring that they will behave in a particular way at the game.

Create Opportunities for Positivity

Halftime shows, entertainment during timeouts, and other chances to encourage the crowd during downtime is a great way to keep the crowd feeling positive and tied to prosocial engagement with the game rather than allowing them to descend into negativity and anger.

Simply giving crowds a break can be helpful, but if they spend their break time building up their anger amongst one another, breaks can do more harm than good. Therefore, being proactive during downtimes is a great way to encourage the kind of behavior that you want in crowds at your sporting event.

Enjoy Positive Crowds

Crowds can be a great asset for any sporting event. After all, in many ways, the fans are what the game is all about. By being proactive in your crowd control and encouraging positivity, you can make it much more likely that you will have a positive, engaged crowd instead of one that is out of control.

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Aaron Gordon is a writer for various CosmoBC.com blogs.

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