What Watching Football Does to Your Body, According to Science

Ready for 2026 World Cup the last thing? You may think you are, but your body needs to be ready to do another job – especially if your favorite team does.

Studies show that watching high-intensity matches can raise your heart rate, increase your stress levels, and increase your cardiovascular capacity.

According to a recent research researchers at the University of Bielefeld in Germany, the physical stress of fans increases by about 41 percent during the last football match compared to a good day. Heart rate also rose sharply, jumping from 70.9 beats per minute to 78.7 beats per minute—a difference even compared to the other weekend.

Bielefeld investigators followed 229 fans of German club Arminia Bielefeld for three months. The participants wore smart watches that continuously recorded heart rate and stress levels based on heart rate fluctuations, allowing researchers to compare the final day of the 2025 German Cup with the days leading up to the game.

What happens at a football game starts long before the game even starts. The researchers observed that fans’ stress levels started to rise in the morning and peaked before the event. Even after the final whistle, the spectators showed signs of great stress.

Where you watch the game also makes a difference. The study found that fans who watched on stadium had an average heart rate of 94.2 beats per minute compared to 79.4 among those who watched the game on television. After their team’s first goal, those in the stands saw their heart rates rise to an average of 108 per minute, a much stronger response than they normally do at times.

Drinking alcohol it seems to increase energy. Players who reported drinking at the game had heart rates that were about 5 percent higher than other fans at the game and about 12 percent higher after their team’s first goal. Even researchers haven’t tried medical risksthey feel that alcohol can increase the pressure of the heart when people are in the mood.

In the first few minutes of the match, when the outcome was not certain, heart rates reached their highest levels. When the game seemed decided, the heart rate of the fans dropped.

However, two goals scored in the final minutes gave them the lead again, although there was no chance of a comeback. (You can imagine how fast the hearts of the Argentine fans were beating this week in the fierce comeback against Egypt.) For the authors, this shows that the body does not only respond to the chance of victory but also emotions such as hope, pride, or love for the team.

These findings are consistent with the results of previous studies on the effects of football on the body. This includes research published in New England Journal of Medicine After the 2006 World Cup in Germany, they found that the risk of having a heart attack peaked at about three times during the matches of the German national team among people with heart problems.

Subsequent studies have shown that matches can increase levels of stress hormones such as cortisol and found that fans who are more familiar with their team show a greater biological response to physical activity.

This article appeared first WIRED in Spanish and translated from Spanish.