Kick It Out, a leading UK anti-discrimination charity, says it received the highest number of reports of discrimination it has ever had in a season during the 2023-24 campaign.
In figures published on Wednesday, Kick It Out says it received 1,332 reports during last season, a 32 per cent rise from the previous year and over double the 601 received in the 2021-22 campaign. The data incorporate reports from across the professional game, grassroots, and social media.
According to research conducted by Kick It Out, racism remains the most reported form of discrimination, with the charity seeing a 47 per cent rise in racist abuse across all levels of the game last season. Meanwhile, faith-based discriminatory reports were also up by 34 per cent, driven by a sharp increase in antisemitism (63 per cent) and Islamophobia (138 per cent).
“These figures underline the seriousness of football’s discrimination problem, with reports to Kick It Out more than doubling over the past two seasons,” Kick It Out chair Sanjay Bhandari said.
“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.
“Encouragingly, we are seeing stronger punishments for racist abuse in recent years, including the toughest ever handed out to a football fan found guilty of racist abuse at a football match earlier this season.
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“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.”
The research also showed that abuse targeting players was up 43 per cent, anti-disability insults and language were up 35 per cent and reports of discrimination at youth level (U18s) were up 22 per cent including a seven-fold rise in abuse in under 12s football (4 to 25).
There was also a rise in abuse toward officials in grassroots football, with over twice as many reports of this nature in comparison to last season, an increase that Kick It Out labelled “worrying”.
Although homophobic reports had fallen by 24 per cent, LGBTQ+ hate rose sharply online, with reports up from 43 to 65. Reports of transphobia online also increased by 183 per cent.
(Michael Steele/Getty Images)
