Do Philly sports wins lead to lower crime? Maybe.

There was an unusual occurrence in the city after the Eagles’ 24-7 victory over the Minnesota Vikings on Monday Night Football last month.

What happened, according to Philadelphia police, was … well, practically nothing: Officers on the overnight police shift for Sept. 19 and 20 reported no incidents. No shootings, no murders, nada.

This is an exceedingly rare development in a city that experienced a record number of homicides last year, and it happened again two weeks ago after the Eagles took down the hated Dallas Cowboys, 26-17 — no overnight incidents from Oct. 16 to 17.

It would be foolhardy at best to suggest that watching pro sports might be the key to any kind of sustained, successful crime-fighting strategy. But with the Phillies in the World Series, the Eagles undefeated, and the Philadelphia Union of Major League Soccer on the cusp of a championship, the question deserves to be asked: Do winning teams create a protective halo of joy that lowers crime on gamedays in sports-obsessed Philadelphia?

The answer, according to researchers, is maybe.

According to criminologist Hannah Sybil Laqueur, there is a connection between sports and public safety.

Laqueur, along with co-researcher Ryan W. Copus, studied crime rates in Chicago when football games were on. The results? Crime reports decreased 15% when the Bears were on Monday Night Football and 25% during the Super Bowl.

Coincidence? In their 2018 study, Laqueur and Copus said that because “crime is significantly affected only during game hours provides assurance that it is indeed the game driving the results and not some unobserved feature of game days such as a blizzard or heat wave.”

They also noted that crime of all types — violent, property, and drug — fell across the board, which “suggests fewer potential criminals on the streets, diverted from crime and towards television.”

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Laqueur told me that sports can affect crime in the opposite direction, as well. “There has been some research that’s found domestic violence is more common when the NFL is playing, and in particular, when the home team loses,” she said. “This suggests that the outcome of the game may have an effect, and you could imagine that it would have an opposite ‘halo’ effect when the outcome was positive. That is, that winning would boost spirits and that might have a behavioral effect.”

The main finding of her study could be instructional for Philadelphia’s leaders on crime prevention, as the researchers found that crime didn’t tick up for short periods before or after the game. “We saw drops in crime during televised sports games, and, in most cases, didn’t see short term increases before or after the game. This suggests some amount of crime may be prevented if people simply have something better to do.” Which points to another culprit that criminologists say is behind the rise in violence in Philadelphia and other communities, especially among young people: boredom.

There’s evidence to support that as well. When car-jackings rose in Philadelphia near the tail-end of the pandemic, some teens cited boredom as the primary motivation behind their decision to commit theft.

Shootings among young people in Philadelphia have doubled in the last five years, a rise that coincided with an extended period of pandemic-induced closures of schools, youth sports, and other extracurricular activities. Whether or not those closures were the right choice, they left young people with nothing to do.

And for most of my sports-following life, watching the city’s teams has hardly been the most uplifting way to fill the void. Ours has been a city of losers. The Phillies have lost more games than any other team in the major leagues. In the NFL, the Eagles have lost the fourth-most games — a fact that is somewhat assuaged by the team’s underdog Super Bowl win in 2018. The last time the Sixers won the NBA Finals, in 1983, most Philadelphians had not been born. For the Flyers, the championship drought has been even longer — they haven’t won a Stanley Cup since the Ford administration.

It doesn’t help that all this losing has taken place during an era in which Philadelphia lost 400,000 residents, 26% of our jobs, and emerged as the poorest large city in the nation. We’re so desperate for a winner that when the Fanatics sports apparel company tallied up its receipts for the Phillies’ league championship gear, Philly fans ended up breaking a sales record set by long-suffering fans of the Chicago Cubs, who went 108 years without experiencing a championship — the longest drought in North American sports.

For Eagles fanatics like Shamus Clancy, the idea of sports success transforming the city makes a lot of sense: He claims that the Eagles’ Super Bowl-winning season changed his life. In 2017, he went back to college after taking a mental health break, and for two months, the team didn’t lose a game. “Maybe it’s some kind of confirmation bias. I don’t think it is scientifically proven, but everyone was happier,” he said. “The beer was colder, food tasted better, all those things. Maybe I was just happier, and it radiated from me, but it felt like everyone.”

Today, he’s engaged (to a woman he first met at the Eagles’ championship parade), has his own place, and is the deputy sports editor for PhillyVoice — a dream job for any sports-obsessed Philadelphian, even if it means he has to keep it professional when it comes to watching sports. Although that’s probably good for him, too.

Whether or not the recent successes of the city’s sports teams create a halo effect that can abate gun violence, at least the Phillies, Eagles, and Union can help Philadelphians feel like winners again.