Enough is Enough: The Power of Campaigns in Football.

It is no secret that discrimination is a massive problem in sports, especially football. During the 2022/23 season, The Kick it Out campaign group reported a record 1007 cases of discriminatory behaviour across professional and grassroots football, as well as on social media. This is a shocking 65.1% rise from last season, which shows this problem is no closer to being sorted out.  

Recently I had the pleasure of speaking to the FA’s Senior Marketing Manager Daniel Ferguson about the Enough is Enough Campaign, as well as the other campaigns and procedures that are occurring around football. Ferguson said, “I basically look after everything from a marketing and brand perspective that is for driving growth in engagement in participation, getting more players playing, more coaches coaching and more referees refereeing.”  

Image Courtesy of: Daniel Ferguson

The Enough is Enough campaign is a campaign which focusses on sorting out discrimination and bad behaviour throughout football. Grassroots football is as affected by this behaviour as the professional game, with there being a possibility of it being worse as it is unlikely that there will be any cameras to catch their actions. 

Ferguson said, “Behaviour in grassroots football in particular is in a difficult space at the moment. We are seeing more reported serious incidents than ever before, so looking at that insight we know there’s an issue, we know there’s a challenge. Based on that we can identify who the culprits are, we can identify certain target audiences who we’re seeing reports come from.” 

An advert showing the Enough is Enough Campaign. Courtesy of Daniel Ferguson and the FA.

Punishments have also been documented in the campaign, including removing players or staff from play indefinitely, stadium and ground bans for fans, and points deductions in extreme or repeated instances of hate.

Every organisation has their own form of campaign, each of which focuses on a specific topic whether broad or specific. Charity organisation Stonewall has the Rainbow Laces, and allows people to buy laces to show support for the matter, The Premier League has its No Room for Racism campaign, and there are organisations fully focused on these matters like Show Racism the Red Card.

One main form of discriminatory behaviour is social media comments and direct messages. Whenever a person of colour, and in some cases just female footballers in general, have a bad game or their actions have affected the outcome of the game, their comment boxes have been bombarded with derogatory comments. In some cases, people have been directly messaged by their own fans calling them names, and all this can have an adverse effect on mental health.

When a person hides behind a profile picture and username, it often means that they think they are untouchable and they can say what they want without any form of punishment, when the reality should be the complete opposite.

The FA have also been working with other organisations to bring to light the issue with social media. Ferguson said that the plan is to “influence the government to bring in new legislation” of which there is currently an Online Safety Bill which is currently going through the legislative process.

“Equally we want to work with the social media companies themselves" said Ferguson, with the plan to make these social media companies “take a greater responsibility at how they can block and remove both the content and the perpetrators of that content as well.”

This is an issue which will not be solved overnight, as there are still significant obstacles to overcome. However, the hope is that in the future there will be some form of breakthrough which significantly reduces this ongoing issue. As the campaign says, “There is no space for hate, and there is no space for you.”