Football hate crimes

Freedom of Information (FOI) Act request ref: 01/FIN/25/2862

Version Date: 03/03/2025 

Are you able to please provide statistics on the number of reports you received of incidents of homophobia or sexual orientation-based discrimination at football matches for the following calendar years:

1.         2023
2.         2024

If possible, for each year, please split data by whether the incidents occurred at professional or semi-professional matches; or amateur matches.

The Performance Analysis Department have provided the following information.

Searches were completed on Niche for crimes that had an occurrence location relating to a football stadium/club/pitch locations using occ. add. common name or occ. add. building name or location – location subtype of ‘Sports stadium’. Filters were added on those which were hate crimes and there were none that were in relation to sexual orientation.

Another search on Niche was completed on crimes that had an occurrence entry log containing the word ‘football’ or ‘stadium’. Filters were added on those which were hate crimes. These were manually reviewed, and this resulted a nil return for sexual orientation.

Searches were completed on the incident database, STORM, for incidents which had a hate related qualifier and had the incident description containing the word ‘football’ or the comment containing the word ‘football’. This resulted a nil return.

Lastly, searches were completed on the Non-Crime Hate Incidents (NCHI) database filtering on any incidents containing the Finalisation Class Code of ‘SXO’ or ‘Prejudice - sexual orientation’. This resulted in the following data: