Hooliganism, Corruption and the Business of Power
Football, the "beautiful game," is supposed to be the last great common language. Yet, in much of Southeast Europe, this spirit of unity co-exists with a far darker reality: terraces in stadiums have become a staging ground for coercion, corruption and organised crime. Over the past three decades, football hooliganism in the region has evolved far beyond spontaneous clashes between rival fans. In Serbia, Bulgaria and their neighbours, tightly organised hooligan “firms” now resemble small paramilitary units or franchise operations of the underworld. They control stadium sectors, protection rackets and drug distribution. More importantly for politics, they can be mobilised at short notice as disciplined shock troops – to intimidate opponents, to sabotage protests or to manufacture street support for those in power.
A recent episode in Bulgaria offers a telling illustration. What began as a mass anti-government protest in central Sofia – afamiliar mix of ordinary citizens, young families and civil society activitst – quickly descended into chaos once masked hooligan groups pushed to the front, hurling stones, flares and fireworks. Television screens filled with images of violence, the broader grievances against corruption and impunity all but disappeared from the narrative. The line between legitimate democratic expression and orchestrated vandalism was deliberately blurred, leaving many citizens with the impression that protest itself is synonymous with disorder and extremism. All of this combined provides potent fodder for Russian and other authoritarian disinformation campaigns, which aim to magnify social divisions, polarize public discourse, ultimately eroding trust in civic processes.
In parts of the Western Balkans, the fusion of politics, hooliganism and organised crime has become a structural feature of how power is exercised and contested. Hooligan groups are cultivated as deniable enforcers, rewarded with impunity, public contracts or access to lucrative grey-market opportunities. When necessary, they can be cut loose in high-profile “anti-crime” crackdowns that project toughness while leaving the underlying political economy intact.
How did a sport as contagious as football become so deeply entangled with coercion, crime and political repression – and what does that mean for the prospects of democratic renewal in the region?
Ultras vs. Hooligans
The term “football hooligans" usually brings to mind images of drunken brawls outside stadiums. In reality, in much of Southeast Europe these are not just unruly fans but organized groups with clear hierarchies and business models. They recruit primarily from young men on the margins of the labour market, often with a police record for violence, petty crime or drug offences. Although often conflated with ultras, the hardcore supporters known for steadfast loyalty, chants and choreographies, hooligans are defined above all by their readiness to use force. In many cases violence is rooted in a dangerous mixture of extremist ideologies, organized crime and political patronage. Such extremism thrives in regions marked by economic fragility and nationalist sentiment.
The notorious hooligan faction “Grobari,” supporters of PFC Partizan at the stadium
Photo: The New York Times Magazine.
A notable example is Serbia, where hooligan factions are among the most hierarchically structured and violent in Europe, operating as full-fledged criminal organisations dealing in extortion, drug trafficking, and arms smuggling. Bulgarian football hooligan’s factions are not far beyond their neighbours, although their involvement in organized crime takes less violent and more subtle forms. Bulgarian hooligan groups tend to be less hierarchical and more fragmented, though still deeply entangled with politics, oligarchic interests and organised crime.
Politics Meet the Stands
When it comes to the Serbia and Western Balkans, the roots of this symbiotic relationship dates back to the late 1980s, when political leaders in a crumbling, economically stricken Yugoslavia turned to football’s mass appeal as a propaganda inoculator. Organised fan factions inside stadiums became amplifiers of ethno-nationalist rhetoric and separatist sentiment, narratives that would soon contribute to the eruption of Yugoslav wars of the 1990s.
During the wars, the destructive potential of hooligan collectives was channelled in the service of national(istic) interests, often by aligning with paramilitary units such as the Serbian Tigers. Slobodan Milosevic himself reportedly instructed their leader, Željko “Arkan” Ražnatović, to command the Red Star Belgrade supporters in the capital.
What followed Milosevic’s fall was not the disruption of these networks, but instead their deeper compenetrating into the political and criminal fabric of Serbia. In fact, the weaponisation of hooligans did not end with the regime change; rather, it cemented and became even more institutionalised. In Serbia, groups such as Delije (Red Star supporters), Grobari (Partizan supporters), and the Janjičari are not merely football ultras; they have been repeatedly mobilised to control political rallies, suppress protests, or express orchestrated loyalty to ruling elites.
During the COVID-19 protests of April 2020, for instance, supporters linked to Delije appeared in the streets, lighting flares and chanting slogans in favour of the then incumbent Serbian Progressive party. Photographs of President Aleksandar Vučić’s son Danilo attending matches alongside notorious fan leaders further substantiated the perception that political elites had struck a transactional pact with these groups: protection and impunity in exchange for loyalty and operational alignment against democratic opposition.
Danilo Vučić (in red) with his arms around a known hardline football fan at the 2018 World Cup
Photo: The Sun, UK Edition.
This arrangement follows a predictable pattern. Hooligan groups help maintain order – or disorder – in the stands and on the streets when called upon, while politicians turn a blind eye to their criminal enterprises. In this direction, the infamous case of Veljko Belivuk, leader of the Principi group, is exemplary. Arrested in 2021 alongside 29 members for homicide, rape, and drug trafficking, Belivuk was rumoured to have enjoyed political protection and even cooperation with elements of the security services.
Further examples confirm a wider regional trend in former Yugoslavia: political parties outside Serbia have repeatedly tapped into ultras and hooligans, treating them as auxiliary forces for street politics too. In Bosnia and Herzegovina, the Croatian Democratic Union has been accused of maintaining links with violent fan groups to project influence and intimidate rivals. In Kosovo, members of Plisat and Shqiponjat were mandated to protest in Pristina in 2015 against an agreement on municipal autonomy, effectively transforming into an extension of party activism. And obviously, the list goes on. What emerges is not a collection of isolated scandals, but a model – football’s most radical fringes turned into a deniable enforcement arm for parties and power brokers, in a region where formal institutions remain fragile and public trust is already thin.
Criminalization and Politicization
Similarly, in Bulgaria the football had long been a tool of the communist state machinery. CSKA Sofia, for example, was governed by the Ministry of Defence. Levski Sofia, instead, initially dissolved in 1949, was restored in 1956 as “the people’s team” and would later merge with Spartak Sofia, the team of the Ministry of the Interior, which also oversaw the secret police. As such, Bulgarian football clubs also came in handy to promote regional pride and ideological uniformity to the party while reinforcing the status quo.
The transition of the 1990s did not break this linkage between football, politics and coercion; it simply changed the cast of characters. After 1990, state funding for sports ceased, leaving clubs dependent on shady businessmen and oligarchs who treated them as vehicles for political and financial gain. Into this vacuum stepped in oligarchs, not as ordinary investors, but as political patrons and financial lifelines. Without them, teams like CSKA Sofia or Levski Sofia would have disappeared entirely.
In Bulgaria, gambling tycoon Vasil “The Skull” Bozhkov, repeatedly investigated for corruption and racketeering, bought CSKA in 1999 from another oligarch, Iliya Pavlov, who was assassinated in 2003, and owned it until 2006. From 2019 to 2020, Bozhkov also owned Levski Sofia, which had previously been controlled by Russian oligarch Michael Cherney in the late 1990s. Cherney used the club to acquire Bulgaria’s first GSM operator, Mobiltel, before being expelled from the country by the national counterintelligence service in 2000.
The pattern is not confined to Bulgaria. In Croatia, entrepreneur Damir Mišković turned HNK Rijeka from financial precariousness to sports stability, while oligarch Miroslav Mišković is currently the largest sponsor of Red Star Belgrade in Serbia. This is just to name a few. The mechanism created a unique top-down dependency for which clubs survived only through the patronage of politically connected magnates. In turn, oligarchs used them as a leverage to secure political protection for their economic interests.
This dynamic turned fan groups into valuable assets, and once again, a tacit transactional pact was forged: in 2013, during a wave of nationwide protests, football hooligans from both CSKA and Levski were reportedly paid by political parties to take part in demonstrations against the caretaker government. Similar patterns were already visible in the late 1990s, when football factions were remunerated to create street upheaval and protest against the BSP (Bulgarian Socialist Party).
The mid-1990s were remarkable years, as for the moment when Bulgaria’s hooligan factions effectively merged with organised crime. Hooligan groups such as Levski-Zapad, or “Levski West,” became entwined with the Hammer Gang, a violent criminal network active in Sofia’s drug trade. Hence, hooligans would be utilised as foot soldiers for the gang, to distribute narcotics, enforce territorial control, and carry out punitive attacks. At the same time, leaders like Hristo “Itso the Jesus” Varteryan and Boris “Bobby the Trouble” Borisov rose through Bulgaria’s criminal upper echelons, and both would later be killed. Similarly, Rosen “The Animal” Petrov, leader of CSKA’s “Animals,” turned the faction into a recruitment pool for his organised crime group. Drafting directly from his hooligan’s faction, he built a network managing drug distribution and extortion across Sofia.
As the fan groups morphed into operational branches of criminal enterprises, their leverage grew and so did their sense of immunity. Judicial proceedings often led to lenient sentences, and cooperation with police or politicians, sometimes to “maintain order” during games or protests, shielded them from prosecution.
Photo: The Irish Sun.
Such dynamics simply never occurred in Western Europe. There, most clubs were historically private enterprises operating within stable capitalist economies, sustained by diversified investment, corporate sponsorships, and globalised markets — not by the favour of a single shady patron. As a result, ultras factions in Western Europe were never tied to the political fortunes of a benefactor, nor did they become indebted street muscle available for hire. Corruption, of course, is not absent — Juventus famously appointed an ultras leader involved in criminal activity as its security manager in 2015 — but these cases did not produce the systematic political instrumentalisation seen in Southwest Europe. The structural subordination that links hooligan groups in countries such as Bulgaria and Serbia to oligarchic networks, and by extension to the state apparatus, simply has no real Western equivalent.
Yes, football (dis)unites
In Serbia, hooligans from various football groups have acted as de facto assault brigades under police protection, even going as far as to attack student protesters opposing the incumbent regime in March 2025. In Bulgaria, a resembling dynamic has unfolded: in 2019, hooligans from the Sofia West faction of Levski were unleashed as counter-protesters in support of Ivan Geshev’s controversial appointment as Chief Prosecutor, reportedly organised by the wife of an investigator close to him. Once Geshev took office, the same faction began assaulting Levski’s South Division ultras for opposing oligarch Delyan Peevski’s influence within the club, as he was sanctioned under the Magnitsky Act. In Sofia’s latest anti-government protests, the same hooligan groups once again took to the streets, creating chaos and casting doubt on the legitimacy of the citizens’ democratic mobilisation.
Taken together, these episodes point to more than isolated abuses. They illustrate a pattern of democratic overreach in which states and ruling elites outsource part of their coercive capacity to violent fan factions. Hooligan groups, sustained by corruption, lucrative criminal markets and political patronage, are repeatedly used to police the streets, intimidate opponents and contaminate otherwise peaceful civic action with orchestrated violence. In the process, they undermine foundational rights such as freedom of assembly and expression. When citizens know that any protest could be infiltrated or overwhelmed by masked “supporters” acting on someone else’s orders, the cost of participation rises and the credibility of democratic processes erodes. The terraces and the streets become extensions of a political economy in which those who control violence can convert it into influence, contracts and informal veto power.
What makes this even more concerning is that many hooligan groups have moved beyond purely domestic roles, forged alliances with other factions, known as ‘twinnings,’ some of which are cross-border. The Bulgarian hooligans of Levski Sofia ‘twinned’ the Croatian Bad Blue Boys and have repeatedly expressed solidarity when some of their members were arrested. Such alliances strengthen the influence of these groups, and help them extend their criminal operations across borders. Thus, the additional power gained by the hooligan’s factions through such international exchanges further undermines the fragile democratic foundations of these countries.
Ironically, it is not unusual to hear fans around the world insisting that “politics should stay out of football.” In reality, when hooligan firms double as mercenaries for political and criminal interests, football becomes a permanent rehearsal for street-level authoritarianism. Every protest hijacked by masked “fans,” every investigation that quietly collapses, every violent leader who walks away with a token sentence sends the same message: organised brutality pays and the rule of law is negotiable. If this spiral is left unchecked, stadiums will remain factories of impunity and fear, turning out new generations trained to hate, obey and attack on command. The price will not be counted in broken seats or suspended matches, but in societies where citizens no longer believe peaceful dissent matters, institutions can protect them, or democracy is anything more than a rigged game.
