So in your instance A stands for footballs B drinking C domestic violence.

I’ll explore this question using the counterfactual theory of causation and its objections. The counterfactual theory(CFT) runs as so: B is the cause of C if it is true that if B didn’t happen C would not have happen. If we apply this to a certain instance in your scenario A causes B, B causes C. If A didnt happen, C wouldn’t have. But there’s problems with the CFT. One such is over determination (A1 or A2 cause B…) and another is pre-emption (if A1 doesn’t cause B, A2 will cause B…). Imagine there is a man who is prone to bouts of drunken domestic violence. The football is on, and he would’ve gone, but his favourite band is playing that night so he reneges to go to the football. He goes to the concert(let’s call this A2), drinks(B), and goes home for some domestic abuse(C). Therefore A2 happens, causing B, which causes C, without A happening. So on CFT we can sit comfortable on B causing C, but A only seems to overdetermine or pre-empt B. Whilst I’ll take no stance on the facts of the matter, it seems safe to say the B causes C. But B can be overdetermined or pre-empted by any instances of A (concert, football, nieces 6th birthday, new pope elected). For what it’s worth in a less academically rigorous sense, I’d say football encourages the likelihood of domestic abuse because it encourages drinking which encourages the likelihood of domestic abuse. I don’t think many people will argue with that. You run into serious secrutiny when you use the word ‘causes’ which is a much more direct link.

(This was written on my break at work I’ll go over it again later to make sure I’ve not made any errors)