Is football fan culture becoming toxic?

In 1991, Leicester City was a club in the dark ages. By the time I left in 2000, we were a club going places. Two decades later, the club is cemented in the Premier League, and one of only seven teams to win the trophy.

You might think that being part of this journey would have won me the respect of fans. And for a time, it did. I was the club’s first Chief Executive during a remarkable upward trajectory. We won promotion to the Premier League and, against the odds, claimed two League Cups.

Fans don’t tend to idolise CEOs or chant their names - and neither should they. Fans are the absolute lifeblood of a club. Ultimately, everything you do as Chief Executive is, in the end, an attempt to deliver happiness to them.

Fans don’t tend to make death threats to CEOs either. But, during the worst period of my time at Leicester, this is exactly what happened to me.

I remember the first time I heard about a threat to my life. I was driving up to Leeds and, not long into the journey, was pulled over by the Police. I assumed that I was speeding. But as soon as I wound down my window and the officer asked me if I was Barrie Pierpoint, Chief Executive of Leicester City, I knew something was awry.

The officer informed me a death threat had been made that would require me to be escorted by the Police to Leeds. I explained I wasn’t especially keen on that. The officer informed me that my safety was at serious risk without the escort.

It’s very hard not to recall such incidents when I sit down to absorb the morning’s football news.

In the past year, I’ve read about how 90% of female fans have seen sexist abuse online, Chelsea launching their No To Hate campaign in light of the racial abuse of Reece James, a fan arrested at Wembley for racially abusing a steward, another fan pleading guilty in court for antisemitic abuse, and death threats sent to the Brighton forward Neal Maupay.

In my case, the abuse I received was because of the fan’s perceived falling out with manager Martin O’ Neill. I wrote in detail about the fracas and consequent outfall between me and Martin in Minding My Own Football Business and won’t elaborate here.

But with this new wave of abuse, there are three common factors. They mainly take place online, sometimes setting the tone for in-stadium abuse.

Where these ‘fans’ cannot hurt you with despicable racist comments, they will resort to death threats.

And, unlike in my time, you don’t have to have committed any perceived sin. Simply playing for the wrong team or missing a goal scoring chance is enough to unleash the unthinkable.

In the 90’s, the kind of abuse that I received was, thankfully, a rare occurrence. It would even spill into supermarket visits, where I’d receive the abuse face to face.

But, with online abuse, you can scroll social media and, within five minutes, encounter egregious personal abuse. It is notably rare that footballers report face to face abuse. The lack of accountability online emboldens the abusers, and so they feel comfortable making threats they dare not utter offline.

This abuse should not be dismissed as the kind of ‘banter’ regularly experienced at stadiums during my time. It should not be confused with chanting that a ref or manager ‘don’t know what they’re doing’. It is not simply a transfer of offline abuse to online. The nature of the abuse has altered.

Moral Confusion

Social media seems to have fostered a kind of moral confusion among this type of fan. Take the recent Newcastle United takeover by PCP Capital Partners and PIF (Public Investment Fund of Saudi Arabia).

Because of my time in the Leicester boardroom, I have followed previous owner Mike Ashley’s time at the club carefully. Naturally, I know how it feels to believe you are steering the club to the best of your ability and still feel somewhat despised.

Despite his faults, I do believe Ashley ran the club in a way that would keep it sustainable and safe. After all, relegation is in no one’s interests, particularly from a financial point of view, and when Newcastle did drop to that second tier, they had two dependable assets in Alan Pardew and Rafa Benitez, to quickly get them back to the promised land.

It seems to me that Ashley got bored with the project and wanted out for many years. Do you recall those early days when Ashley stood amongst the fans in a Newcastle shirt, and was celebrated by Geordies for drinking with them at local pubs?

Where he failed badly was his lack of communication with fans. With a fanbase such as Newcastle’s, it is important to communicate regularly and with total honestly. Ashley underestimated the knowledge and funding required to meet his and Newcastle’s goals. ?

When realising the time, effort and expertise required to run a club with success, it seems he reduced his ambitions, and ran the club with sustainability prioritised over trophies and glory.

Ashley was vilified and scorned. If he had attended St. James Park, it would be likely that he would be greeted with the same kind of irate protests I was subject to at Filbert Street all those years ago.

Yet, as he left, vilification, as the default mode of some Newcastle fans, transformed into instant celebration.

I must admit, seeing Newcastle fans raising the Saudi Arabian flag outside the stadium surprised me. Ashley made mistakes at Newcastle, no doubt. But the rapturous celebration of a takeover linked to a regime widely criticised for the most heinous human right violations made me consider again the toxicity of social media as personified by some fans.

It’s widely established and acknowledged that these platforms benefit from, and so foster, polarisation and extremity of opinions. To me, what happened at St. James Park crystallised this. The devil was gone, and its banishers had arrived, promising a glorious future.

Ashley kept Newcastle in the Premier League for much of his tenure, clearing the debts he inherited. It wasn’t an especially successful or exciting period for the club. He can be a forceful operator. ?However, he did not bring with him a huge ethical and moral question mark over the cash he was injecting, as we are seeing now under the new regime.

Good Vs. Evil

This ‘good vs. evil’ polarisation is now so common online that it is often said to have spilled into the democratic process.

And so it is becoming with football fandom too. My great fear is that, unless we take measures to increase the accountability of social media profiles, the toxicity of sections of football’s online fandom – already a dark and unappealing word – will poison the game we all love offline too.

If we do not align to quicky ensure that each abusive remark, post and reply is accountable to its sender, with consequences that deter others from doing the same, what happens online will follow offline, just as it has with our political debate.

And if that happens, the beautiful game will take a truly ugly turn.?