Pride is officially at stake when England meets Italy in the Euro 2012 quarter final on Sunday [24 June 2012] an ING survey shows.

ING polled 16,000 people in the 16 Euro 2012 finalist countries on a diverse range of football-related questions, including whether they were “big fans” of the game, the amount in euros they would be willing to sacrifice for their team to win and more.

The English might be widely regarded as more reserved than Italians but the results suggest emotions are set to flare.

Asked if they feel pride if their team wins, almost 60% in both England and Italy answered “yes”. Italy had a higher proportion of “big fans”. But people in England were prepared to “sacrifice more” based on three economic measures; giving up money, giving up holidays and giving up 1% of their purchasing power. 

“Of course, football matches are not decided by the support of the fans but football matches do play a big part in the lives of many of the team’s supporters. Football is more than just a game,” said ING senior economist Ian Bright, leader of the eZonomics.com project.

“We know that people respond in an emotional way to events. Football exposes some fascinating economics lessons. One of them is the need to control emotions. On the field, sticking to a long-term plan and trusting objective statistics can keep emotions under control and, in the long run, may bring better results. The same can hold true off the field as well.”

ING’s Economics Department is running a dedicated Cup-o-nomics campaign for Euro 2012. It includes surveys, economic studies and articles by well-known sports and economics author Simon Kuper. For more information, including a report on the full survey results “Fanning the football flames”, visit www.ezonomics.com/press.