Racism at professional football matches on the decline
For the past two years, in-person racism at professional football matches in England and Wales has halved.
Home Office figures, released at the end of September last year, show that there was a 46% decrease in reported racial incidents between the 2021/22 and 2023/24 seasons.
These figures exclusively apply to England’s top four leagues. All but the Championship has seen a consecutive two year decline in reported incidents.
Reported racial incidents in the Championship fell in 2022/23 from the previous season. However, 12 more racial incidents were reported in 2023/24.
This increase may lead one to question whether elements of the Championship makes racism harder to police. When asked, Samuel Okafor, CEO of anti-discrimincation charity Kick It Out stated he did not believe this was the case.
However, he did reveal that from his experience, tackling in-person racism in the Premier League was a greater task. He said: “I think there’s still a challenge [to police racism] regardless of the funding or size of the league.
“I’d say the [Premier League] is probably more challenging to police on given that there are more people watching it, more people attending it and so on.”
Why has in-person racism decreased at professional matches?
The underreporting of racial incidents is a potential contributing factor in its decrease at professional matches.
Samuel, referring to Kick It Out’s newest incident report said: “I think one of the things we do know is that there is still a huge underreporting that has happened across all the leagues.
“For example, our sex and misogyny campaign and research that we did at the start of the year. We know that over half of the women who completed the survey said that they had experienced sexism and misogynistic behaviour within games. But I think 85% of those that had experienced it hadn’t reported it.”
He makes the point that the figures on record may be below the actual number of incidents. Similar logic can be applied to the figures released by the Home Office. While unconfirmed, there remains the possibility that not all incidents were reported.
The easing of Covid-19 restrictions could have also influened racial incident reporting. In-person attendance at matches largely halted during the 2019/20 and 2020/21 seasons.
However, as restrictions were lifted, and fans pummelled into stadiums once again, 199 more incidents were reported in 2021/22 than the two seasons prior. The increase was the largest recorded across all seven seasons.
In 2022/23, racial incident reports declined by a fifth from the previous season. Couped up at home for a year and anxious to ‘let loose’ once more. Pent-up emotion during the pandemic could explain the potential reporting peak in 2021/22.
Football organisations and combating racism at professional matches
Tackling racism and all forms of discrimination in football has been as much as an objective for the Football Association (FA) as it has for Kick It Out. The FA recently published their EDI Strategy with objectives to boost representation, drive inclusion and tackle discrimination.
Yasir Mirza, the FA’s EDI Director said: “Tackling discrimination has been a strategic priority for our organisation for many years, and as outlined in our latest strategy, it will continue to be a key area of focus for us.
“From grassroots football, coach education, and the women’s and girls’ game, to disability football, our England teams, and our own workforce. We’re deeply committed to ensuring inclusion is ingrained into everything we do, to ultimately help create an environment where everybody feels welcome to take part in our game.”
Meanwhile, Kick It Out’s approach centres around education and reporting discriminatory behaviours. Samuel added: “I think education is going to be really key. Fans continuing to educate themselves on diversity and inclusion.
“We really want to make sure that people are reporting it because when people report it, the appropriate action can be taken as well.”
Professional football clubs and combating racism at matches
The approach taken by organisations such as the FA and Kick It Out remains vital to its erasure. But its success also relies on the co-operation and willingness of football clubs to combat racism.
Mishael Downer, a former Premium Event Steward at Tottenham Hotspur, recalls the club’s zero tolerance approach to racism. On a racial incident reported by a player a couple of years ago, he said: “The player made a complaint that somebody in the crowd said something racist to him.”
Tottenham carried out a deep investigation over the next few weeks, but it was inconclusive.
The North London club not only tackled the issue once reported, but made sure their employees were equipped to deal with such situations. He said: “They do address [racism] and it’s certainly not ignored. It’s part of the match briefing on what to do in those situations.”
Spurs recorded 32 racial incidents at home games in the last seven seasons. The club falls one short of Manchester United who leads the ‘Big Six’ in reported incidents.
Despite this, Mishael maintains that from his experience, the club committed to adressing in-person racism at its matches. He added: “I have to say that they do take [racism] seriously.”
The rise of reported racial incidents on social media
In-person racism at matches is on the potential decline. However, Kick It Out figures, taken from their 2023/24 incident report, reveals that there has been an increase in racism on social media across the past five seasons.
There were 731 incidents reported in 2023/24. Almost an 80% increase from 2019/20. Racial incident reporting saw its largest jump in the most recent season, up a third from 2022/23.
Shaka Hislop, Honorary President at Show Racism the Red Card and former Newcastle United player said: “Social media has become a race to the bottom. Somebody will say something, and in the comments another will say something negative. The next person that wants to say something negative has to be more scathing and nasty.
“It’s part of a mob mentality – an anonymous mob mentality.”
The existence of social media for communication, sharing ideas and building communities is invaluable. But its anonymity has, and with a growing audience, continues to make it a breeding ground for disinformation and discrimination.
He added: “I’m not sure how I would have navigated this space when I played. It wasn’t a thing when I was playing football.
“The easy answer is switching it off. But I also see the value of it to today’s players of having that social media presence. Finding a way to cut through the noise and connect your fans and supporters.”
Football organisations and tackling racism on social media
When brainstorming how to address the rise of racism on social media platforms, most would look to organisations like the FA and Kick It Out.
The action taken at matches seems to have an impact, so why can’t a similar methodology be implemented online? Well, these organisations have limited influence on social media platforms.
The FA have channelled their efforts into working with the government to tackle racism on social media. Yasir said: “We’re very concerned about the rise in online abuse. We don’t have jurisdiction over posts on social media platforms.
“However, in recent years we’ve worked closely with the Government to ensure that the newly introduced Online Saftey Act effectively tackles offensive and discriminatory abuse online and better protects social media users.”
Kick It Out have also looked to the work of regulators. Samuel added: “We continue to work with the regulator OFCOM. We’ve done a number of pieces of work with OFCOM around the Online Safety Act. We want the regulators to take and hold the social media platforms accountable for discriminatory views that come onto their platforms.
“That’s going to be really key here because we continue to see a rise and impact on discrimination towards players, match officials, and coaches. Stronger action needs to be taken on it.”
Barriers to tackling racism on social media
Football organisations’ lack of jurisdiction is one barrier to addressing the increase of racism on social media platforms. Effectively communicating and working with social media companies to achieve a common goal is a potential other.
“Three maybe four years ago, I did a panel,” Shaka said. “On there, was a guy who was part of the Metropolitan Police hate crime division, specifically social media hate crime.
“The police officer was making the point that you had six months to charge someone for a social media hate crime. To do that you would have to get evidence from the social media company. He said that they would write to Twitter for evidence of that post, and it would take Twitter six months to get back to them.”
Sourcing information and obtaining the co-operation of these social media companies previously had its challenges. Elon Musk’s takeover of X and the recent policy changes on Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta platforms do not seem to help.
Since acquiring the former bird app, Musk has implemented a range of policy changes including reigning back the threshold for hate and violent speech. The “free speech” epidemic later infiltrated Meta offices as Zuckerberg promised to “get back to our roots around free expression on Facebook and Instagram.”
Samuel said: “Social media is a place where toxic and discriminatory views flourish and the changes that those social media firms have made are not going to help.”
We cannot say for certain that online abuse has increased because of recent decisions by social media firms. But combating the rise of racism on social media was and still appears more of a battle than a fight.
What comes next?
The decline in in-person racism at professional matches indicates that a game without prejudice can be achieved. At the least, we are moving in the right direction. However, the surge in online racism reveals that there is still work to be had.
Samuel reinforced that on tackling racism, Kick It Out’s position remains unchanged: “This is not a time to row back. This is time to double down on our effort across the DEI activity, tackling discrimination, driving inclusion.
“All the data points that we’re receiving really shows that actually there’s more work for us to do in tackling it, in building education, in driving a great transparency of data and so on.”
The relevance of organisations like Kick It Out and DEI initiatives in sport have become a point of contention in recent years. The NFL removed its ‘End Racism’ lettering from the end zone on its football fields ahead of the Super Bowl back in February, while on the England team taking the knee prior to Euro 2020, former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said he preferred action over gestures.
“Taking the knee isn’t going to change the world. It’s what you do when you stand up,” Shaka said.
He admitted that the action opened the door for conversations. When young people saw Mohammad Salah and Jude Bellingham taking the knee, it empowered them to ask questions.
That’s the true crux of it, isn’t it? To empower and to be empowered. When supporting fans and players against racism and championing initiatives like Show Racism the Red Card and Kick It Out, we act on our power to invite conversation.
Conversations, no matter how uncomfortable they may be, have the potential to change the world. At the very least, they have the potential to inspire positive action in football. One so that the game becomes one played by all for all.
