The anti-discrimination and inclusion charity, Kick It Out, received a record number of reports of racism, sexism and faith-based abuse in football last season.
Kick It Out’s annual review shows that incidents involving discrimination rose by 32% during the 2023-24 campaign, via 1,332 reports of abuse logged across both professional and grassroots football, as well as on social media.
Racism remains the most reported form of discrimination, with Kick It Out recording a 47% increase in reports of such abuse across all levels of the game, up to 731 from 496 last year. Reports of faith-based discriminatory incidents rose by 34%, almost certainly driven by growing antisemitism and Islamophobia.
Discriminatory reports relating to incidents targeted at specific players soared by 43% – up from 277 to 395. That represents a record high for Kick it Out, whose figures indicate that 55% of such abuse is directed at players from east Asian backgrounds. Meanwhile, sexist abuse and misogyny aimed at female footballers is up 44%.
Kick It Out’s chair, Sanjay Bhandari, said: “These figures underline the seriousness of football’s discrimination problem, with reports to Kick it Out more than doubling over the past two seasons.
“It’s deeply concerning to see how steeply reports are rising. However we believe this increase can also be attributed to fans becoming less tolerant of discrimination and greater awareness of reporting procedures.”
This perhaps reflects the educative efforts of Kick It Out after the charity last season delivered a recorded 117 fan education sessions and academy education to more than 2,000 players, coaches and staff from 42 clubs. It has also employed coach educators to offer grassroots coaches the skills to tackle unconscious bias and launched a partnership with the match officials’ body PGMOL.
For a second successive season, reports of mass homophobic chanting were down, from 43 to 17. It is perhaps no coincidence this follows a law change turning certain chants into chargeable offences.
“Encouragingly, we are seeing stronger punishments for racist abuse in recent years,” Bhandari said. “Including the toughest ever handed out to a football fan found guilty of racist abuse.
“However we now need to see better coordination from football authorities and stakeholders to ensure there are positive outcomes for victims of abuse across the game, particularly on social media where too much discriminatory abuse still goes unchallenged.”
