Racism in Football: Are Social Media Platforms Doing Enough?

The issue of racism in football reared its ugly head again in the wake of England's Euro 2020 final loss to Italy. Three of England's Black players missed their penalties in the decisive shootout, and the vile abuse directed towards them via social media soon came to light. Having condemned the abuse, the UK government summoned social media platform representatives to discuss how they should deal with instances of racism on the services they oversee.

Speaking after the meeting, Johnson told MPs: "Last night I met representatives of Facebook, Twitter, TikTok, Snapchat, Instagram, and I made it absolutely clear to them that we will legislate to address this problem in the Online Harms Bill." Should they not act in removing hate and racist abuse from their platforms "they will face fines amounting to 10 per cent of their global revenues", adding: "We all know they have the technology to do it."

As shown in Statista and Sportfive's European Football Benchmark, large shares of fans, especially in the UK, agree that platforms should do more about the racial abuse of players (44 percent), while almost 40 percent think that a valid strategy would be clubs and players boycotting social media if the action taken is not deemed as sufficient.