News release

From: Springer Nature

Sport: ‘Football fever’ peaks on match day

The mean stress level of fans of the football club Arminia Bielefeld was 41% higher on the day of the German Football Association’s (DFB-Pokal) 2025 Cup final compared to non-match days, according to a study published in Scientific Reports. The authors suggest that this reaction, known as ‘football fever’, may be driven by the intensity of fans’ emotions towards their team, each other, and the sport.

Football — also known as soccer — is the world’s most popular sport and can evoke strong physiological and emotional reactions in fans. The 2025 DFB-Pokal Cup final took place on the 24^th May 2025 in the Berlin Olympic Stadium (Olympiastadion) and was the first time that Arminia Bielefeld reached this stage. The opposing team, VfB Stuttgart — who reached the final for the seventh time — beat Arminia Bielefeld 4-2 and won the Cup final for the fourth time.

Christian Deutscher, Christiane Fuchs, and colleagues analysed smartwatch data from 229 adult Arminia Bielefeld fans over a 12-week period, beginning ten days prior to the cup final and concluding ten weeks afterwards. They analysed changes in participants’ heart rates and stress levels — inferred from a combination of heart rate and heart-rate variability — and investigated the factors influencing these using survey data from a subset of 37 participants, who were 54% male and had a mean age of 39 years. The authors found that the mean stress level of participants was 41% higher on the day of the cup final compared to non-match days. Stress levels rose in the hours prior to the match, peaked just as it began, and remained elevated after it ended. Participants’ mean heart rate increased from 71 beats per minute on a non-match day to 79 beats per minute on the Cup final day. When the authors compared the smartwatch and survey data, they found that the mean heart rate was 23% higher among participants watching the match in the Olympiastadion than among those watching on television or at public gatherings. It was also 5% higher among those who had consumed alcohol, compared to those who had not.

The findings highlight the strong physical reactions of football fans to major matches. The authors note that elevated heart rates in combination with alcohol can increase the risk of adverse cardiac events such as arrhythmias. They suggest that future studies should investigate physical responses to intense events in greater detail across different types of high-stress situations.