The National Football Museum in Manchester hosted and took centre stage at this year’s Fairgame Conference
This year, multiple organisations stood together to bring key voices to the major problems surrounding the beautiful game, with a focus on innovation, collaboration and shaping the future for generations to come. The event always promises a program of networking, communications and global insight into the challenges within the sport.
This year’s conference attracted a diverse combination of organisations and charities, from established, well-known leaders to ambitious startups looking to build a reputation. A shared centre stage had speakers within sessions focusing on the main themes of technological advancements, sustainability and expectations of audiences.
One of the initiatives discussed at the conference include Football V Homophobia. This campaign holds an annual Month of Action, which sees the tackling of LGBT+ discrimination and making football safe for everyone.This encourages clubs, fans and leagues to take action and host multiple initiatives.
During the month of February, clubs are encouraged to host dedicated matchdays to raise more awareness of the homophobic hate received via social media, run educational sessions so people understand the importance of the campaign and celebrate the diversity amongst the players.
Media and Comms Officer, Jon Holmes who helps run and the campaign spoke upon the subject stating the importance of this campaign and what it means to the people
“Sadly this is the type of discrimination which is really rising, particularly in many grassroots football at the moment”. With the help of their recently concluded Month of Action campaign in February, “the Premier League had a week long pride activation” which saw all of the clubs and fangroups in the Premier League amplifying the Football V Homophobia message, which reminds the supporters not to engage with homophobic chanting.
“It’s been great, we had more professional clubs publicly supporting the campaign than in the previous year”, with him praising the success of this campaign, with them bringing important awareness across the English Football League.
With the EFL, now having 72 clubs that do an Annual Rainbow Ball Activation, it oversees every club playing with a rainbow ball for a week, and over 260 different teams, groups, leagues, sharing the message and reminding the fans that it’s damaging the game and something needs to be done about it.
With an increased number of reports of discrimination, Jon Holmes states that importance as this level of discrimination “stops people from wanting to play, going to support their team, and any upcoming future footballers questioning their place in football.”
Football v Homophobia is supported by Village Manchester Football Club, which is a local gay and inclusive football club in Manchester.
With this support, Village Manchester FC is the main entity providing organized, competitive, and inclusive football teams for gay, bi, trans, and straight players in Manchester.
The Football v Homophobia campaign runs workshops, programmes and community events to provide resources and equipment, with the main goal of challenging discrimination and making people feel safe at the club where everyone is welcome. By doing this, not only is the campaign’s reputation strengthened, which can make partnerships and attract supporters, but it also builds trust within the LGBT community and ensures that football is indeed for all.