More than half of monitored players and officials received abusive messages, FIFA says

Oct 9 - More than half of the 1,606 players, coaches and officials monitored by FIFA’s Social Media Protection Service (SMPS) at the 2026 World Cup received online abuse, FIFA said on Friday.

• 812 of the 1,606 individuals monitored received at least one message classified as abusive.

• Racism was the most common form of discriminatory abuse, accounting for 12% of all abuse and 20% once general abuse is excluded.

• The most targeted individual received more than 10,000 abusive posts, 40% of them racist.

• The SMPS analysed 17.1 million posts and comments, of which about 240,000 were verified as abusive after human review.

• 2,905 accounts were escalated for investigation and 786 were referred to law enforcement for review.

• The moderation tool scanned 60.7 million comments on official FIFA and member association channels and hid 9.2 million, including spam. REUTERS