One in five athletes faced online abuse during this year’s Women’s World Cup, football governing body Fifa said. According to its Social Media Protection Service, a tool developed to monitor hate speech on social media, women players were 29% more likely to encounter online abuse compared with their male counterparts in the 2022 men’s World Cup finals. Discriminatory messages – including homophobic, sexual, and sexist content – accounted for almost half of the abuse. Over 150 women received abusive messages during the tournament, with the tool analysing more than 2,000 active accounts across a variety of social media platforms. The final, in which Spain beat England, generated the largest spike of abusive content across the tournament, with more than 6,500 comments.

• The US women’s national team received more than twice the number of online abuse of any other competing nation, the report found.
• Two players, one from the US and the other from Argentina, “received significantly more abusive messages than any other players at the tournament”, ESPN reported.