Do Politically Irrelevant Events Cause Conflict? The Cross-continental Effects of European Professional Football on Protests in Africa

We examine whether politically irrelevant events can cause conflicts, by analyzing the effects of professional football games in Europe on protests in Africa—an unintended spillover across the continents. By expanding psychological theories, we argue that the outcomes of the football games in Europe can affect African people's subjective evaluation of domestic politicians, which in turn can trigger protests. By exploiting as-if random variation in the results of 15,102 close football games conditional on betting odds, we find that compared to draw games, close losses of African players’ teams increase peaceful protests in their original countries while not changing the likelihood of riots or armed conflicts. The effect is particularly large for non-ethnic protests targeted at a central government. Close losses also temporarily decrease people's trust in their country's leader. By contrast, close victories do not have equivalent or compensating effects on protests or public opinion. These results suggest asymmetric misattribution: people in Africa unreasonably blame domestic politicians for bad luck in European football games, prompting protests; but they do not credit politicians with football victories.