Pathology of TV Sports Programs in Terms of Addressing Soccer Fan's Abnormal Behaviors

Abnormal and violent behaviors on part of soccer fans are one of the problems inflicting this popular sport which brings about financial, cultural, social and political losses as well as other damages. The performance of media, particularly television, as one of the most important source of shaping the fan's minds before entering the stadiums, has a key role in controlling or adding fuel to the abnormal behaviors of the fans during sensitive matches - e.g. a derby match.The present article aims to study the performance of the TV weekly sports programs before and after the 61st and 63rd derby match between Istiqlal and Perspolis teams from this aspect. The research shows that such programs not only dont they pay sufficient attention to culture-building in terms of fan's behaviors in the stadiums, but also they add fuel to such behaviors and send the fans with a negative mind to the stadiums by addressing the referee mistakes in the previous matches of one of the involving teams, conducting controversial and stimulating interviews with players and coaches, predicting the result of the match and declaring one of the two teams as the winner as well as spreading rumors.