See how the Premier League has been tackling discrimination as well as promoting equality, diversity and inclusion
Premier League works alongside its clubs to fight racism and with other football partners such as The FA, EFL, League Managers Association, Professional Footballers’ Association – as well as its longstanding partners Kick It Out, Stonewall, the Football Supporters’ Association and Level Playing Field.
Here are some of the ways the Premier League’s actions are making it clear there is no room for discrimination in football.
Action against online abuse
– Since 2019, the Premier League has been proactively monitoring social media platforms to report abuse directed at players and work with the social media companies to remove offensive material from their platforms. This includes running online monitoring programmes, filtering systems and developing artificial intelligence systems to better detect and remove abusive comments and has led to a 72 per cent reduction in abusive open messages across social media.
– This was followed in June 2020 by an online abuse reporting system to support players, managers and their families who receive discriminatory abuse on social media. The Premier League reports and investigates each incident working with the police, Crown Prosecution Service (in the UK) and other relevant authorities in the UK and internationally, and take legal action when required. In the past three seasons, the Premier League has investigated more than 1,000 cases. Details
– The Premier League and other football organisations continue to challenge social media companies to improve their proactive interventions to prevent online abuse on their platforms. This will be maintained as the Online Safety Bill comes into law. Details
– In April 2021, the Premier League and all 20 clubs joined other football authorities for a social media boycott, in response to the ongoing and sustained discriminatory abuse received online by players and many others connected to football. Details
Enhanced anti-discrimination measures
– In August 2021, the Premier League announced new enhanced anti-discrimination measures, including bans from Premier League stadium bans for any individual found to have behaved in a discriminatory or abusive way towards any club employee, player, match official, matchday steward or fans attending fixtures. This covers behaviour conducted in-person or online. Details
– The League introduced enhanced training for matchday stewards to equip them to identify and respond to discriminatory abuse, and assist in gathering evidence to ban perpetrators.
– The Premier League has a Safety and Security Observer in attendance at every fixture to ensure the League can track the prevalence of discriminatory incidents and can support clubs in addressing the issues collectively.
Promoting equality, diversity and inclusion
– Since launching in March 2019, No Room For Racism has brought together the Premier League’s wide-ranging work promoting equality and inclusion across all areas of football.
– Matches dedicated to No Room For Racism have sent strong messages to fans attending games and those watching around the world, urging them to take action by reporting any racist behaviour.
– The Premier League Black Participants’ Advisory Group, which is made up of current and former players and coaches, helps shape and inform the League’s ongoing action
– In February 2021, the Premier League announced its No Room For Racism Action Plan. Details
– Earlier this year, the League announced the progress that had been made two years on from the launch of the Action Plan. Details
– The Premier League and its clubs run a variety of anti-discrimination educational sessions within schools and community programmes, as well as for fans.
– All 20 Premier League clubs, and some EFL clubs, continue to progress through the Premier League Equality Diversity and Inclusion Standard, which requires clubs to demonstrably embed and develop equality, diversity and inclusion across all areas.
– Initiatives to increase opportunities for coaches in professional football from under-represented groups.
– The Premier League, Professional Footballers’ Association (PFA) and EFL launched the Professional Player-to-Coach Placement Scheme in June 2020. Details
– The Coach Inclusion and Diversity Scheme launched in the 2020/21 season and supports the transition of individuals from underrepresented groups into full-time coaching roles within English professional football.
– The Premier League works closely with and provides financial support for Kick It Out.
– The League also provides funding to other organisations for their anti-discrimination work and for specific events such as the Football Black List, which celebrates and highlights role models from the black community working in football. Details
– The Premier League has partnered with Stonewall since 2017. In recent seasons there has been a focus on education, encouraging LGBT+ acceptance in children and young people involved in programmes such as Premier League Primary Stars and Premier League Kicks, and within Academies.
Supporting communities
The Premier League continues to develop and promote its No Room For Racism education resources via national community programmes (Premier League Primary Stars, Kicks and Inspires) and across the Academy Education and Player Care network. The resources focus on allyship, racial stereotyping, online abuse and inclusion and engage young people through Premier League-funded community programmes run by 105 professional clubs.
The Premier League Primary Stars No Room For Racism education resources are available to more than 18,900 primary schools across England and Wales. They have been downloaded by more than 10,900 primary school teachers, engaging over 328,000 pupils in classrooms.
In addition to Premier League investment into community programmes, in partnership with the PFA, the Premier League invests £6.275million annually into clubs through the Premier League Charitable Fund, with a further £2.8m invested via the EFL Trust. This provides core support to 98 club charities to be inclusive, well governed and sustainable, with each of those clubs required to have a named strategic EDI lead as well as operational leads for race equality, disability, gender and LGBTQ+ inclusion.
During 2022/23, 32 per cent of participants engaged across the four Premier League-funded programmes (Premier League Primary Stars, Premier League Kicks, Premier League Inspires and Premier League PFA Community Fund), were from ethnically diverse communities, an increase of one per cent from 2021/22.
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