Why Singing Is One of Sports' Most Enduring Rituals

July 15, 2026:

Why Singing Is One of Sports' Most Enduring Rituals

Footballs fans in Munich, Germany, sing during a match in 2017. —Adam Pretty/Bongarts—Getty Images

Last Saturday night, on July 11, trains into Leeds, England, where I live, were canceled because of an electrical issue. The only way for me to get back home—or, in the case of most of my fellow passengers, to get to the big pub screens showing the England-Norway World Cup match—was to take the local double-decker bus. I was in the company of about two dozen teenage boys, many shirtless in the heat, drink cans locked in their fists, in a state of high excitement, and in possession of a battered boom box.

First, the muted strains of “Three Lions,” the English football anthem exploring the great disappointment of being an English football fan in recent decades, began to mix with the muttering and chatter of the bus. Then as the music swelled towards the chorus, a wall of eager voices rose above the rest of the noise: “Football’s coming home, it’s coming home!” The sound was raucous, atonal, yet weirdly joyful, and as the bus swung round the curves past blackened stone cottages and fields freshly hayed, a middle-aged man in the front of the bus turned around, and, hanging onto the back of his seat, started to sing along.

An older couple put up their hands and began to sway. “No more years of hurt, no more need for dreaming!” A man with a cane coming up the stairs raised it triumphantly. He staggered into the aisle and held onto the seatbacks, belting out the lyrics as the bus pulled back into the road. The setting sun was pouring red through the clouds as a pair of children scampered into seats at the back and then jumped when the whole bus roared, “Three lions on a shirt!”

Why do sports fans sing?

It’s not just England, and it’s not just football. Group singing is an important tradition surrounding big events for many sports around the world. When crowds of people sing in unison in a stadium or arena—when fans of Turkish basketball sing “12 Giant Men,” for example, or cricket fans belt out “Mrs. Robinson”—it’s sometimes intended to pep up the players. Fans often write new lyrics referencing individual players or make jokes about the opponents (or about the singers themselves).

But fan singing serves another purpose, social scientists say. On a fundamental level, “music can turn a collection of individuals into a temporary social group,” says sports psychologist Andy Lane of University of Wolverhampton in the U.K. “The song effectively tells people: ‘We are experiencing this together.’”

When people who have watched a televised game sing on the bus or on the sidewalks of their neighborhoods—despite being nowhere near the stadium—it’s a continuation of the same effect. “After an important win, the emotional intensity remains high, and singing allows supporters to express joy, affiliation, and shared meaning in public,” says Lane. “It can be both spontaneous emotional release and a signal of belonging.” Watch rugby fans in the streets of Paris, singing after a match, and you can feel the energy.

After wrapping up “Three Lions” on the bus, the crowd segued into Oasis’ “Wonderwall.” (Not every place might have been willing to roll with a loud singalong on public transit, rather than in a stadium: A Dutch graduate student visiting from Germany gazed about him in disbelief, marveling that this would never happen in Germany—that someone would have called the police.)

Even non-fans can join in

This type of public singing can spread beyond the initial group to people who are not even sports fans. After “Wonderwall,” the bus continued into “Sweet Caroline,” the Neil Diamond hit from 1969 that has become an unofficial English football anthem. A grandmotherly woman leaned across the aisle, smiled, and told people within earshot that she was singing along to “Sweet Caroline” when she was a teenager.

It’s that sense of universality that makes these moments endure. “Familiar songs such as ‘Three Lions,’ ‘Wonderwall,’ and ‘Sweet Caroline’ are culturally shared, so they can temporarily reduce the boundary between supporters and bystanders,” says Lane. “People begin by joining the song, but in doing so they also join the group.”

Later that night, long after the bus had arrived at its destination, England won, advancing to the World Cup semifinals. On July 15, they will play Argentina. How many fan singalongs might fill the buses and streets today?

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