Hate crime often takes place in the context of sporting events, particularly football matches. Hate crimes are crimes motivated by hostility, prejudice and hate towards the victims’ identities. Definitions of ‘hate crime’ vary from one country to the next and even within countries. In England and Wales, the central point of reference is the operational definition offered by the College of Policing (2014), which earmarks hate crime as offences that are motivated by hostility or prejudice on particular grounds, such as race, religion, sexual orientation, transgender status and disability. From this perspective, hate crime can be understood as any criminal offence which is perceived, by the victim or any other person, to be motivated wholly or partly by hostility or prejudice based on a person’s protected characteristics. McDevitt et al (2001) observe that ‘hate’ is absent from the vast majority of hate crime. Rather, hate crime may be driven by bias, prejudice or ‘negative feelings held by the offender towards a social group that, in their eyes, have an “outsider status” ‘ (Garland and Chakraborti, 2012: 40). An ‘in-group’ is any group a person belongs to or identifies with; in contrast, an ‘out-group’ is any group a person does not belong to or identify with. A key element of hate crime is that offenders target potential victims because of their membership of despised out-groups. According to Gerstenfeld (2013), it is the fact that the victim is targeted because of their actual or perceived membership of a social grouping – rather than the presence of any bias or hatred – that is the most significant factor when defining hate crime; that is, it is the attack on the person’s identity that sets hate crime apart from other crimes.

Football-related hate crime occurs not only within stadia but, increasingly, also online. During the UEFA (Union of European Football Associations) European Football Championship final between Italy and England in July 2021, three Black English football players missed penalties, leading to a spiral of online hate comments on social media sites; the three Black players were called ‘n*****s’, ‘m**key’ and other racist derogatory terms.