The European football union UEFA reported almost 300 abusive posts on social media during the preliminary round of the European Women’s Football Championship in England. More than half of them were subsequently deleted.
The teams and individual players from England, Spain, France and Italy were therefore the most often the target of abusive posts on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and Twitter.
While 70 percent of the reported posts contained insults without reference to a specific group of people or ethnicity, 20 percent were classified as sexist, six percent as racist and four percent as homophobic.
According to UEFA, 55 percent of the posts were deleted, most of them within a good hour. Overall, however, Michele Uva, UEFA’s director of football and social responsibility, expressed satisfaction.
