The Premier League is about to introduce a brand new LGBTQ+ inclusion marketing campaign after ending its partnership with Stonewall, the charity behind the broadly recognised Rainbow Laces initiative.
Stonewall’s Rainbow Laces marketing campaign, launched in 2013, turned a fixture throughout English soccer, with gamers from all Premier League golf equipment carrying rainbow-coloured laces and captains donning rainbow armbands to advertise acceptance and equality. The marketing campaign aimed to assist LGBTQ+ rights and foster inclusivity amongst followers and younger individuals.
After over a decade of collaboration, the league will now lead its personal marketing campaign, timed to coincide with LGBTQ+ Historical past Month in February, The Telegraph report.
“Rainbow Laces has benefited from a variety of companions with a pure ebb and circulation reflecting cultural and sporting modifications,” a Stonewall spokesperson advised BBC Sport.
“Alongside different sporting our bodies the FA has been instrumental in advancing LGBTQ+ inclusion on the grassroots degree and extra just lately the Girls’s Tremendous League has taken up the mantle as the ladies’s recreation has grown – enabling Rainbow Laces to succeed in extra various audiences.”
Regardless of Stonewall’s efforts, current reviews from Kick It Out reveal an alarming enhance in discriminatory incidents in soccer, together with rises in sexism, transphobia and faith-based abuse, with racism persevering with to be essentially the most prevalent problem.
Controversies round gamers’ attitudes to rainbow armbands have additionally made headlines. Final season, Ipswich captain Sam Morsy declined to put on one attributable to spiritual beliefs, whereas Crystal Palace’s Marc Guéhi confronted criticism for personalising his armband with the phrase “I Love Jesus.”
Moreover, Manchester United scrapped plans for LGBTQ+ assist jackets after a participant refused to take part.
With no overtly homosexual or bisexual gamers at the moment within the Premier League, and the surge in discriminatory incidents, some query the timing of the break up from Stonewall – an organisation extremely revered for its work in LGBTQ+ advocacy.
Particulars of the Premier League’s new marketing campaign are nonetheless underneath wraps, however because the league presses “reset,” there’s hope it is going to introduce a significant and efficient initiative that advances equality moderately than undermines it.
