"10,000 Abusive Messages Sent to One Player"... Racism and Threats of Violence Plague World Cup

FIFA Confirms 240,000 Abusive Posts and Comments... 50.6% of Participants Targeted, 786 Accounts Referred to Law Enforcement

More than half of the players, coaches, and match officials who took part in the 2026 FIFA World Cup in North and Central America received abusive messages on social media.

On October 9 local time, FIFA released the results of its analysis of the Social Media Protection Service (SMPS), which operated during the 2026 World Cup, from June 11 to July 19.

FIFA logo. Reuters-Yonhap.

The SMPS is a service operated by FIFA to protect players, coaches, match officials, and others from online abuse. Using artificial intelligence (AI), it detects abusive posts and comments and automatically blocks inappropriate content, such as insults and spam.

FIFA used AI and other methods to analyze more than 17.1 million posts and comments. Of these, 477,000 were flagged for human review. A total of 240,000 posts and comments were confirmed as abusive, and 2,905 accounts were identified for potential review in criminal investigations. A separate automatic filtering feature screened 60.7 million comments and blocked 9.2 million before they were shown to general users.

According to FIFA, of the 1,606 players, coaches, and match officials monitored by the SMPS during the World Cup, more than half - 812 (50.6%) - received at least one abusive message. Racism was the most common type of abuse, accounting for 20%, followed by threats of violence (14%) and xenophobia (12%). In particular, racist posts accounted for 11% during the group stage, but their share rose to 20% across the tournament as a whole.

The player who received the most attacks was sent more than 10,000 abusive messages, 40% of which contained racist content. The player's identity was not disclosed.

FIFA referred 786 of the 2,905 accounts identified for potential review in criminal investigations to law enforcement agencies, and designated 232 accounts that had posted serious content that could pose an actual threat to safety for priority investigation. FIFA voiced concern that online abuse could also affect the families of those involved. FIFA also said it had intervened to address ongoing online attacks targeting referees and the disclosure of their personal information, known as "doxing."

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.