Author Archives: Emily Holbrook

About Emily Holbrook

Emily Holbrook is a former editor of the Risk Management Monitor and Risk Management magazine. You can read more of her writing at EmilyHolbrook.com.
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Egyptian Soccer Riots Highlight a History of Violence in Sports

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The game that pitted Cairo’s Al-Ahly team against Egypt’s Al-Masry Wednesday ended in riots that claimed the lives of 79 people (at current count). Though it is not clear what started the violence, whether it was fans taking their support too far or if it was politically motivated (Egyptians recently marked the one-year anniversary of the revolution that took President Hosni Mubarak from office), what is clear is that the result was frightening, to say the least.

As a result, the governor of Port Said, Egypt, has resigned while the head of the country’s football association has been fired and the board dissolved.

This catastrophe highlights a long-standing violent link between live sporting events and rabid fans. Here’s a glimpse at some of the most recent examples of violence in sports:

  • In October 2004, fans of the Boston Red Sox rioted just outside of Fenway Park after the Red Sox won the American League Championship Series over the New York Yankees. Police used “pepper guns” in some cases and an Emerson College student, Victoria Snelgrove, was killed by a pepper filled paintball-like projectile which hit her in the eye.
  • On November 19, 2004, near the end of an NBA game between the Indiana Pacers and Detroit Pistons, a brawl erupted between Pacers players and Pistons supporters.
  • On April 12, 2005, the UEFA Champions League quarterfinal between intracity rivals AC Milan and Inter Milan was abandoned after Inter fans threw missiles and flares on to the pitch at the San Siro stadium, with AC Milan goalkeeper Dida hit by a flare.
  • In May 2006 during an Australian Football League match between North Melbourne and St Kilda, a North Melbourne fan had a provocative confrontation with coach Dean Laidley, to which Laidley responded with a verbal barrage, inviting the fan to the club rooms to see how badly the players were feeling due to their consistently poor on-field performance. The incident was captured on Australian national television. The fan committed suicide by throwing himself in the path of an oncoming train the next morning.
  • On June 6, 2010, the final game of the Greek Basket League finals between ancient rivals Olympiacos and Panathinaikos degenerated into what one commentator called a “night of shame” for Greek basketball. Panathinaikos entered the game, held at Olympiacos’ home of Peace and Friendship Stadium, with a 2–1 lead in the best-of-5 series. The homestanding Reds fans were reportedly incensed at what they considered to be biased officiating in the Greens’ favor in Game 3. The violence began even before tipoff, with police forced to use tear gas on rioting Reds fans; the game started 40 minutes late. In the third quarter, with PAO leading 50–42, the game was halted for about an hour after Olympiacos fans threw various incendiaries at the PAO bench, with one smoke bomb exploding next to the bench. By the time the teams resumed play, all but about 2,000 fans had left. Then, with little over a minute left in the game and PAO ahead 76–69, many of the remaining Reds fans began throwing objects on the court, leading the officials to suspend play and forfeit the game to PAO, giving the Greens the title. The new champions had to be escorted off the floor by riot police. The league organizer, HEBA, fined Olympiacos €111,000 and required them to play their first nine home games of the 2010–11 season behind closed doors and without live TV coverage.
  • The next meeting between the two teams, this time hosted by Panathinaikos on January 12, 2011, saw Olympiacos win 65–61, followed by a rain of incendiaries from Greens fans at the Reds.
  • The 2011 Vancouver Stanley Cup riot immediately followed the loss of the Vancouver Canucks hockey team to the Boston Bruins in the deciding Game 7 of the Stanley Cup Finals in June of that year.
  • Later in the same month, major violence broke out involving supporters of historic Argentine football club River Plate during and after their promotion/relegation playoff with Belgrano. The first leg on June 22 in Córdoba was delayed for 20 minutes after River Plate hooligans tore through a fence and stormed the field to verbally and physically attack River players. The second leg, on June 26 at El Monumental in Buenos Aires, had what was reported to be the largest security presence for any match in the country’s history, with over 2,200 police called in. However, it was not enough to keep River hooligans, angered at what became the club’s first relegation from the top flight in their history, from rushing the field. Violence quickly spread, with fires set in the stadium, pitched battles between hooligans and police, and looting in nearby areas. At least 35 police and 55 civilians were reported to have been injured.
  • On December 21, 2011, a fourth round match in the 2011–12 KNVB Cup between Eredivisie clubs Ajax and AZ at Ajax’s home of Amsterdam Arena was marred by a violent fan incident. In the 36th minute, Ajax held a 1–0 lead when a fan ran on the pitch and launched a karate kick from behind at AZ goalkeeper Esteban Alvarado. The player responded by kicking the fan several times before security arrived. When Alvarado was sent off for retaliating against his attacker, AZ left the pitch, and the match was abandoned. The KNVB rescinded the red card and ordered the match replayed in its entirety behind closed doors on January 19, 2012. Ajax was also fined €10,000 for failing to prevent the fan—who was supposed to be serving a 3-year stadium ban—from entering the pitch, and given a suspended one-match spectator ban (not including the replay). Ajax accepted the penalties, and announced that it had given the fan a 30-year stadium ban and a lifetime ban from the club and its season ticket list.

It’s clear that event management companies within the sports industry need more robust risk management methods.

 

Zappos in the News: A Reputation Nightmare

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Zappos, the world’s largest online shoe store, has taken a beating in the press this week after it became apparent that private information of its 24 million customers became compromised.

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CEO Tony Hsieh issued the following statement via email:

“We’ve spent over 12 years building our reputation, brand, and trust with our customers. It’s painful to see us take so many steps back due to a single incident.”

I’m sure it’s also painful for Hsieh to scan the headlines about his company that have surfaced in the last few days. The following are just a few:

  • Even Big Companies Cannot Protect Their Data — a blog piece from the New York Times, which states that more often than not, companies are resorting to telling their customers that it is up to them to protect their data stored on the company’s servers. The piece notes that even though the company claimed to have a security breach response plan in place, Hsieh provided no explanation about why the data was vulnerable.
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  • Zappos Data Breach Response: Good Idea or Panic Mode? — PC World ran an online article Tuesday that highlighted both sides of opinion spectrum. While some analysts praised Zappos for their response to the incident, others, including John D’Arcy, professor of information technology at the University of Notre Dame, called the overall response plan “not a good idea.”

Wyoming: Work at Your Own Risk

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Wyoming’s decades-long oil and gas boom has drawn thousands of people to the state for high-paying — but dangerous — jobs.

It was the alarmingly high rate of fatal on-the-job accidents that prompted former Governor Dave Freudenthal to put together the Workplace Safety Task Force consisting of members from the major industries in Wyoming as well as several state agencies. The task force hired Dr. Timothy Ryan, an occupation epidemiologist, to look into the problem and provide possible solutions.

In analyzing 17 years of occupation fatality data (1992-2008), Dr. Ryan found that:

The common theme throughout is the lack of a “culture of safety” in Wyoming. The following is a summation of what the employees described as their typical work environment:

  • There is a breakdown in communication between the upper management, supervisors, and employees regarding safety.
  • “Often the safety training that we receive is not enforced on the work site.
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    ”

  • Employees are told to “get the job done” and safety protocol and rules are not enforced, resulting in injuries and fatalities.
  • On any one job site, there can be a wide range in the safety standards.

In what can only be termed “shocking,” the report claims that based on the total number of fatalities, Wyoming averaged a fatality “every 10 days of the last 10 years.”

As the statistics indicate, the state of Wyoming is in dire need of solution to this problem. Dr. Ryan suggested the following:

  1. Organize and develop continuity of ongoing efforts.
  2. Develop data monitoring system for the collection and timely analysis of occupational data.
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  3. Promote OSHA courtesy inspections.
  4. Support efforts by industry to develop, monitor and enforce safety standards and practices.

The implementation of these suggestions will hopefully take Wyoming off the list of “most dangerous states to work.”

Foxconn Workers Threaten Suicide

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Foxconn, China’s mega-manufacturing plant that supplies parts for Apple iPhones and Microsoft xboxes, is receiving more bad press for the alleged suicide pact that several of its employees were a part of this week.

Last year I wrote about a rise in workplace suicide at Foxconn, where 920,000 people live and work. In 2010, 11 employees had chosen death over working at electronics parts manufacturer, most of them jumping from the top of the highrise dormitories that house the workers. As the story goes:

This is not the first time the company’s worker conditions have come under scrutiny. In June 2006, the London Daily Mail published a story detailing the harsh conditions for the 30,000 employees at Foxconn’s Longhua iPod factory. Seeing a possible major reputation disaster looming, Apple dispatched several executives to investigate conditions at the plant. They issued a report detailing numerous violations of Apple’s supplier code of conduct.

Apple came under fire after these reports and reportedly made changes regarding the labor rules for the departments of Foxconn responsible for manufacturing Apple products. And now conditions at Foxconn are putting one of Apple’s biggest competitors in the spotlight.

Yesterday, dozens of Microsoft Xbox workers climed to the roof of one of the many dormitories on the Foxconn “campus” where they threatened to jump in a dispute over job transfers.

The dispute was set off after contract manufacturer Foxconn Technology Group announced it would close the assembly line for Microsoft Corp.’s Xbox 360 models at its plant in the central city of Wuhan and transfer the workers to other jobs, workers and Foxconn said Thursday.

Workers reached by telephone said Foxconn initially offered severance pay for those who wanted to leave rather than be transferred, but then reneged, angering the workers; Foxconn, in a statement, disputed that account, saying only transfers were offered, not severance.

Though Foxconn has apparently resolved the issues peacefully, 45 employees have resigned.

This is just another one for the infamous Foxconn record, a place that, for years, has received negative press for its harsh working conditions and low pay for employees. But as anyone in business knows, that negative press trickles down to its clients: Apple, Microsoft and Hewlett Packard. For these tech giants, its a reputational nightmare that will continue to make headlines unless more is done — and soon.