The report says racist abuse accounted for 12% of all confirmed cases. When general abuse was excluded, its share rose to 20%.
That distinction matters. Racism is not simply one category within a wider wave of hostility; it appears to be the leading form of discriminatory abuse recorded by ’s monitoring operation. The attacks were also unevenly distributed. One individual reportedly received more than 10,000 abusive posts, with racism present in 40% of them.
’s protection service reportedly analyzed 17.1 million posts and comments linked to monitored individuals. Human review identified around 240,000 as abusive.
A separate operation examined 60.7 million comments on and member-association channels, hiding 9.2 million messages. That total included spam, so it should not be treated as a direct measure of abusive content.
The difference between those figures highlights the challenge facing football authorities. Removing harmful comments can limit exposure, but it does not prevent coordinated abuse from reaching players and officials across multiple channels.
The report says 2,905 accounts were sent for investigation, while another 786 were referred to police authorities. That marks a shift away from treating online abuse solely as a moderation issue.
The important question is what follows those referrals. If offenders face meaningful consequences, monitoring can become a deterrent rather than a post-match clean-up exercise. If not, the numbers risk becoming another annual record of abuse without lasting change.
The next major international tournament will test whether football can improve detection, protect targeted individuals faster and turn online safety from a reactive service into a core part of event planning.