No Room For Racism

No Room For Racism Action Plan progress: Action Against Racism

9 Feb 2023

Michail Antonio and Kevin De Bruyne take the knee

We look at what has changed in the area of taking actions against all forms of racism

To mark the two-year anniversary of the launch of the Premier League No Room For Racism Action Plan, the Premier League is updating the progress that has been made on the six key objectives that were set out in its No Room For Racism Action Plan.

We will also outline the targets that have been set for those “key pillars” to ensure that this momentum continues.

Action Against Racism

Commitment: The Premier League will continue to take action against all forms of racism so that football is a welcoming and safe environment for all participants and fans.

Action includes:
- driving awareness and action among fans through the year-round No Room for Racism initiative
- education of fans, children and young people
- making reporting of abusive and discriminatory behaviour easier and more effective
- improving enforcement and the effectiveness of sanctions, whether offences occur in stadiums or online

What progress has been made?
In June 2020, the League introduced a dedicated reporting system that players and others in the game can use to report any discriminatory tweet, post or direct message that they have received.

All reports received are fully investigated by the League's in-house legal team, with ongoing support provided for further action, including the banning and sanctioning of offenders. The legal team also works closely with the UK police and overseas authorities investigating cases.

From the start of the 2022/23 season, the online abuse reporting system was made available to all Premier League clubs to feature on their official websites, providing fans with a function to directly report discriminatory abuse.

See: How to report racism

The League also continues to work proactively with social media companies to ensure that combatting discriminatory abuse is a priority. This includes running online monitoring programmes, filtering systems and developing artificial intelligence systems to better detect and remove abusive comments.

Another priority is ongoing work with authorities and clubs to protect players and ensure that matchdays are safe and welcoming for all, with a comprehensive approach to data collection for incidents of discrimination both at matches and online under way.