Euro 2022: UEFA announces 7 police investigations have been opened into abusive online posts

Seven police investigations into abusive online content across Euro 2022 are now open, UEFA has announced.

All of the data from UEFA’s dedicated reporting platform, launched at the start of the competition, was shared with English authorities.

The governing body also revealed that more than half of the flagged posts during Sunday’s final were classified as hate speech.

The majority of Sunday’s abusive content, 58 per cent, was directed at teams, while 19 per cent was directed at competition and competition-related accounts.

A total of 60 per cent of flagged content, said UEFA, has already been removed since the beginning of Euro 2022.

What has UEFA said?

A total of 189 posts across social media were tagged for review during the contest between England and Germany, 119 of which, said a UEFA report, “were eligible to be reported directly to the social media platforms for removal.”

“To facilitate access to remedy, all the data has been shared with the English police, with seven investigations currently open,” read the statement, which promised to “scale up the monitoring efforts across all women competitions’ final matches for the next three years.

“The actions around online abuse will continue after the final whistle at Wembley. UEFA will build on the lessons of the past month to concentrate on all of its final competitions, including youth, women’s and men’s finals matches.”

Hate speech accounted for 51 per cent of the flagged content in the final, while 45 per cent was classed as sexist. Racist and homophobic posts comprised two per cent each.

Referees were the targets of 12 per cent of the flagged posts, while individual players were at the receiving end of 10 per cent and coaches one per cent of the hateful content.