adminLONDON. – Homophobia is responsible for a large portion of abuse aimed at footballers and basketballers in the men’s and women’s game, according to a new report.
Of more than 1,500 abusive posts included in the report, homophobic abuse was 40% of posts targeted at male footballers, 27% of that sent to female football players, 46% of the abuse aimed at male basketballers and 19% of that posted to female basketball players.
Messages directed at the athletes also included racism, sexism and ableism. The joint report into online abuse and its impact on performance and mental well–being was conducted by AI company Signify, for FifPro, the NBPA and the WNBPA, which are the global unions representing male and female athletes in football and basketball. It described the 1,558 abusive posts sent from 1,455 unique accounts as “shocking”.
The posts were taken from social media platform Twitter for five months between May and September 2021 and directed at 160 of the most high-profile male and female footballers and basketball players across the biggest leagues in Europe, the United States and South America. The report focused on “targeted online abuse” – messages that were directed at or include the account handle of a player so the player may see it and “suffer the impact of the abusive content”.
The report says its research shows “the horrific, targeted and sometimes criminal abuse that affects players across sports and gender, in both their workplace and family environment”.
What are the key stats and facts?
l 648 abusive tweets were aimed at players from the NBA, 427 from men’s football, 398 from women’s football and 85 from women’s basketball.
l 85% of abuse sent to male footballers was racist and/or homophobic with 90% of tweets to female players having sexist and/or homophobic content.
l In men’s basketball 74% of the abuse was racist and/or homophobic while four out of five instances of WNBPA abuse contained sexually explicit or harassing messaging.
l The report says “the most prominent accounts that drew attention to players, and then saw them suffer abuse, were those of the players’ own teams or competition organisers”.
l Barcelona was the account most mentioned alongside players; with England’s national team the second highest. – BBC Sport.
Online Reporter