The Big Game and Sex Trafficking Claims: Does Evidence Matter?

TAMPA, Fla. – Before I get into the substance of this post, let me just explain why I feel compelled to refer to a certain upcoming major American professional sports event as the “Big Game,” rather than the name by which everyone in the fucking world knows the annual spectacle.

I feel so compelled because the league behind the Big Game is so protective of its brand and so goddam litigious that if I call it the “S**** Bowl” in this post, they might threaten to crush YNOT with a billion-dollar lawsuit.

Yeah, yeah, I know – it would be a silly and likely empty threat, one that no mainstream media outlet would be issued simply for mentioning the Big Game by its true moniker and one that the courts would probably view with skepticism, but YNOT is an adult media outlet. This means, among other things, you can’t even link to this post from some social media platforms, because they think if too many people were to read the crass ramblings of a prick like me (and, God forbid, be exposed to ads for things like adult webcam networks and affiliate programs), society as we know it might collapse entirely, or something.

Plus, receiving even an empty threat from the N**’s attorneys might give YNOT’s ownership an ulcer, so I’m just going to spare them that potential stress with this mirthful bit of self-censorship. Think of it as the “New American Way” – or the “New American Way: Pathologically Litigation-Averse Freelance Writer Edition,” perhaps.

Anyway, as you may know, the Big Game is coming up in Tampa this weekend, which means three things are absolutely assured: Tom Brady will be quarterbacking one of the teams, there will be an obnoxiously long halftime show replete with hundreds of dancing people (and possibly some dancing sharks) and sex trafficking crimes will spike – SPIKE, I tell you! – in the Tampa area before, during and after the Big Game.

We know that third thing is true because around this time of year, every year, the media and a whole lot of organizations that raise money by promising to fight sex trafficking and human trafficking tell us so.

“When major sporting events happen around the world or in the U.S., there’s an influx of people to those host cities,” Josh Miller, the US director of partnerships for the “It’s a Penalty” said in the article linked above. “Even if those people aren’t attending the game, they’re still tailgating and having parties.”

Yes – and nothing gets a tailgate party hopping like a little sex trafficking, right? Just picture all those Big Game revelers this year, out there in the Raymond James Stadium parking lot, ignoring COVID restrictions (if indeed Florida still has any of those), grilling burgers, guzzling beer and getting illicit blowjobs in their extended super-cab pickup trucks. Finally, a sign of normalcy’s return to give us hope the pandemic is soon coming to an end!

There’s just one problem with this bit of conventional wisdom about the increase in sex trafficking surrounding the Big Game: There doesn’t appear to be any reliable evidence or well-sourced data showing it’s true. This is the case even if you conflate voluntary, self-propelled sex work with involuntary and/or coerced sex trafficking, as many politicians and anti-sex work activists seem to enjoy doing.

In researching their 2019 paper, “Debunking the Myth of ‘Super Bowl Sex Trafficking’: Media hype or evidenced-based coverage,” researchers from University of Minnesota’s Urban Research and Outreach-Engagement Center (UROC) “reviewed the published evidence on sporting events and trafficking for sexual exploitation and analyzed US media coverage of past S**** Bowls.”

“Our main finding was that available empirical evidence did not support a causal or correlative link between S**** Bowls and ‘sex trafficking,’” the researchers reported in their paper.

Annie Hill, one of the study’s lead authors and an assistant professor at the University of Texas in Austin whose work focuses on sexual violence, sex work and trafficking in the U.S. and UK, told UT News back in 2019 that “informed media coverage is crucial,” when it comes to communicating with the public about sex and human trafficking.

“The public learns about trafficking primarily through the media,” Hill noted. “One of our goals was to reduce media coverage that misleads the public, so we worked with a wide range of stakeholders to create an evidence-based anti-trafficking message.”

Lauren Martin, Hill’s co-author and the Director of Research at UROC, noted that while “online ads for sex may temporarily increase when large public events take place” such ads are “a substitute measure for trafficking and should not be understood as the same thing.”

What the researchers found was the belief that sex trafficking and human trafficking increase around is rooted in media reports, many of which cite people who sound authoritative on the subject, but who fail to cite evidence or specific data to support their claims.

The actual ‘link’ between sex trafficking and major sporting events appears to be an assumed one – and Martin believes the assumption itself is rooted in other widely shared, but equally flawed, beliefs about sexuality and gender roles.

“The linking of sporting events and trafficking reflects broader narratives about sexuality and sexual exploitation that depict men as aggressive and autonomous, and women as victims in need of rescue or as criminals who should be arrested,” Martin said.

So, why is the research published by Martin and Hill’s team in October 2019 relevant here in February 2021? Despite what the data says to the contrary, the media still reliably churns out scare pieces about the Big Game and sex trafficking spikes.

Yeah, the media’s trafficking panic-merchants are counterbalanced to an extent by the likes of Reason’s Elizabeth Nolan Brown, who always casts an appropriately skeptical eye at hyperbolic sex trafficking claims. But from where I sit, it sure seems like the scare pieces still vastly outnumber the evidence-based ones. And if I were a betting man, I’d wager that in the years ahead, the ledger will remain tilted toward misinformation and the poor assumptions that fuel them.

(For what it’s worth, I’d also take the Bucs and the points.)

Football stock photo by Pixabay from Pexels