Ofcom helped launch a football partnership in February, promising to prevent online racist abuse before this summer's World Cup. FIFA's own tournament count shows the abuse grew once the tournament began, not fell.
Estimated reading time: 6 minutes
In short. On 17 February 2026, Ofcom and eight football bodies announced a new working group, saying existing monitoring "has seen thousands of posts flagged, hidden or removed; with illegal posts being taken forward for prosecution" and that the partnership "will ensure that information and analysis is shared...to support a range of preventative and investigatory action" [1]. The FIFA World Cup 2026 that followed is the one event this partnership was explicitly built to prepare for. FIFA's own Social Media Protection Service recorded a thirteen-fold rise in abusive posts over 2022 in the group stage alone, with racial abuse's share of that abuse up three points on 2022 [4], and the FA's own promise to review the pilot's data after the tournament has not been publicly kept three months on [3]. Three documented mistakes: four stars.
Friday 6 February 2026 was the first meeting of the Online Hate in Professional Football Working Group: the UK Football Policing Unit, the Football Association, the Premier League, the English Football League, WSL Football, the Professional Footballers' Association, Kick It Out and Ofcom, sitting down to share "insights and intelligence about the online hate and abuse faced by people working in professional football" [1]. Eleven days later, Ofcom published the announcement. Four months after that, the FIFA World Cup 2026 kicked off, the single biggest test of whether the partnership's promise meant anything.
"Thousands of posts flagged, hidden or removed"
Ofcom's announcement leans on a record, not just an ambition. It says English football bodies "already monitor their leagues and competitions for abusive online content, with each case being reviewed and reported to the relevant social media company to take action", and that this monitoring of competitions such as the UEFA European Women's Championship in 2025 "has seen thousands of posts flagged, hidden or removed; with illegal posts being taken forward for prosecution" [1]. The new partnership, the announcement says, "will ensure that information and analysis is shared about the online abuse of people who play, watch or work in football, to support a range of preventative and investigatory action" [1]. No numeric target sits anywhere in the announcement: no stated reduction, no deadline beyond "bi-monthly" meetings, no published metric the group has set itself.
Ofcom returned to the subject on 8 June 2026, three days before the tournament began, in an open letter to every online service provider in scope of the Online Safety Act. Signed by Oliver Griffiths, Ofcom's Group Director, Online Safety, the letter calls major sporting events "periods of heightened risk" and references the February partnership directly before setting out what it expects: "adequately resourced content moderation teams", "performance targets for the removal of illegal material", and a named "senior individual who is accountable for complying with these duties" [2]. Ofcom told platforms plainly: "we will be scrutinising evidence that services have not met their duties...and will be prepared to take appropriate action" [2].
What FIFA's own count found
FIFA runs its own monitoring operation, the Social Media Protection Service, independent of Ofcom and the football bodies' working group. Its first World Cup 2026 figures, published 1 July 2026, covered the group stage: 225,000 posts referred for human review out of six million scanned, 89,000 verified as abusive, "a 13-time increase when compared to 2022 when 6,700 abusive comments were identified" [4]. Racially motivated abuse, FIFA said, was "the leading category of abusive comments and posts", 11 per cent of all detected abuse and "a 3 per cent rise when compared to the equivalent stage of the FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022", which FIFA itself called "a significant increase in the objectively worst, most offensive material" [4]. FIFA's own report adds a fair caveat worth keeping: the 2022 comparison is a 32-team group stage against a 48-team one in 2026, and better detection technology accounts for some of the rise [4].
The trend did not reverse as the tournament went on. FIFA's second report, published 18 July 2026, the day before the final, put the whole-tournament count at more than 53 million posts and comments moderated, over seven million potentially harmful posts identified (a 14-fold rise on the 470,000 removed across all of 2022), and more than 200,000 abusive or threatening posts actioned, against 19,600 for the whole of the 2022 tournament [5]. Spain beat Argentina in the final at MetLife Stadium on 19 July 2026 [7]; by FIFA's own measure, the tournament this partnership prepared for was its worst on record for the abuse it exists to catch.
A season of reports, and a review that has not appeared
Kick It Out, one of the eight partnership members, published its own 2025/26 season figures on 14 July 2026, five days before the final. Total reports were up 25 per cent to 1,744, with the number of recorded incidents reaching a record 1,255. Online reports specifically, the category this partnership exists to address, were "up 5% to 650" [6]. That season runs from the partnership's first meeting through the World Cup itself; it is the one independent count that covers the partnership's own working life, and it shows online reports still rising, not falling.
The FA's own 15 June 2026 press release announcing the World Cup pilot, run jointly with the UK Football Policing Unit and Ofcom, promised dedicated Digital Media Investigators and Crown Prosecution Service lawyers "immediately reviewing illegal content" during the tournament, and committed to scrutiny afterwards: "The data from this pilot will be reviewed after the tournament to inform the working group's next steps" [3]. More than three months have passed since the final. No review, report or public update tied to that promise appears on the FA's news pages or Ofcom's online safety pages, and no search of either site turns one up.
The claims, tested
| The document's own words | What the record shows | Verdict |
|---|---|---|
| Existing monitoring "has seen thousands of posts flagged, hidden or removed; with illegal posts being taken forward for prosecution" (17 Feb 2026) [1] | FIFA's own Social Media Protection Service recorded 89,000 abusive posts in the World Cup 2026 group stage alone, a 13-fold rise on 2022, rising to 200,000+ actioned by 18 July, a 14-fold rise on 2022's full-tournament total [4] [5] | The existing record was real, but it did not anticipate the scale the tournament actually produced |
| The partnership "will ensure...a range of preventative and investigatory action" (17 Feb 2026) [1] | Kick It Out's own 2025/26 season count, spanning the partnership's first five months, recorded online discrimination reports up 5% to a record 650 [6] | The one independent online-abuse count covering the partnership's own working life shows reports still climbing |
| "The data from this pilot will be reviewed after the tournament to inform the working group's next steps" (15 June 2026) [3] | Over three months after the 19 July 2026 final, no review, report or update has been published by the FA, Ofcom or the working group | A specific, named accountability step has not been publicly kept |
Credit where due
Ofcom's 8 June letter is not boilerplate. It names concrete expectations, resourced moderation, published performance targets, a named accountable individual, that go beyond a press release, and it was sent before the tournament, not after the complaints started. The FA's World Cup pilot was real investment too: dedicated investigators and CPS lawyers working through an entire tournament, building on a prosecution record that has "previously resulted in custodial sentences, fines and Football Banning Orders" [3]. FIFA's own transparency deserves credit as well: both of its reports are published under FIFA's own name, with FIFA volunteering the 32-versus-48-team caveat against its own headline figures rather than letting the rise stand unqualified. The partnership did not cause the World Cup 2026 abuse spike; it tried to meet it. The gap this piece documents is between the February announcement's framing, prevention backed by a track record, and the outcome Ofcom's own warned-about tournament actually produced.
The mistakes, counted
Three. First, the partnership's preventative framing and its evidence of "thousands of posts flagged, hidden or removed" sat against a World Cup that, by FIFA's own independent count, saw abuse rise thirteen-fold in the group stage and keep rising to a 14-fold full-tournament increase on 2022. Second, the promise of "preventative and investigatory action" sits against Kick It Out's own season figures, covering the partnership's first five months, showing online discrimination reports still at a record high. Third, the FA's explicit promise of a post-tournament review of the pilot's data has not been published more than three months after the final.
Sources
- English Football, Ofcom and Police join forces to tackle online abuse, Ofcom, 17 February 2026
- Open letter: Keeping people in the UK safe online during the World Cup, Ofcom, 8 June 2026
- New pilot launched to monitor and prosecute online hate during FIFA World Cup 2026, The Football Association, 15 June 2026
- FIFA Social Media Protection Service identifies 89,000 abusive posts during FIFA World Cup 2026 group stage - with over one in 10 racially motivated, FIFA, 1 July 2026
- FIFA moderates more than 53 million posts and comments during the FIFA World Cup 2026 through Social Media Protection Service, FIFA, 18 July 2026
- Kick It Out receives 25% rise in discrimination reports, Kick It Out, 14 July 2026
- 2026 FIFA World Cup final, Wikipedia