La Liga "Hate" report: less verbal violence, more positive speech

Sports Weekly All Media Original

For today's football sport, social media is an indispensable part of it. The club will publish announcements and game information through the official accounts on social media, and players will express their ideas through their personal social media accounts and share the details inside and outside the arena. However, there were also a large number of fans leaving messages, among which there must be offensive, even hateful and discriminatory remarks. The Marca newspaper recently released a report that explored the changes in the "hate sentiment" of fans' remarks.

There are less hatred and more expectations

La Liga previously developed a tool called "MOOD (Monitorpara Observation and Monitoring System for Sports Hate Observation and Monitoring System)" to monitor social media hate speech in the Spanish sports field. The Ministry of Inclusion, Social Security and Immigration of Spain is also involved in the use.

In recent years, on social media platforms, some users have taken advantage of the convenience of anonymity and dared to make some highly offensive remarks. Major social media platforms have become tools for these people to incite hatred. In the 2024-25 season, the "MOOD" system analyzed a total of more than 21.9 million conversations (4.6% increase over the previous season). The results showed that the comparison of racist information fell by 65% ​​compared with last season, and the hatred speech decreased by 13% compared with last season.

These data show that people's expression of football topics on social media is changing. La Liga hopes to convey this positive change through the "MOOD index". "What we do is analyze what is happening on social networks and look for initiatives that can improve these phenomena based on the data provided every week. We want to raise awareness among users and let them understand that this behavior is not in line with football's values," said Angel Fernandez, director of branding and strategy at La Liga.

This project means that La Liga and relevant Spanish departments have taken an important step in detecting and eradicating violent behaviors in football and society. The La Liga and Spanish governments hope to achieve multiple goals: to increase fans' awareness of such behavior and reduce the amount of hate speech in social media.

As mentioned above, "MOOD" in the 2024-25 season analyzed 21.9 million conversations on social media platforms, involving 7.3 million users. The most frequent negative information is insulting remarks (539,000), followed by racist remarks (92,000), xenophobic remarks (84,000), homophobic remarks (8,100), and gender-discriminatory remarks (6,500).

"MOOD" analyzes more than 500,000 comments per round, covering social media content before, during and after the match, and assesses hatred at a level of 1 to 10. The closer the score is to 10, the stronger the hatred level, and the closer the score is to 0, it means a more ideal situation. "The index dropped below 5, which means that in football, positive emotions and expressions have surpassed negative emotions, which is the direction we are working on," Angel Fernandez explained.

By the end of the 2024-25 season, conversations on social media have become healthier and more empathetic. The "MOOD" average this season is 6.2, down from 6.5 in the 2023-24 season. More importantly, there were 3 rounds of matches (Round 15, Round 18 and Round 38) with scores below 5, which is the first time since "MOOD" started to run. Especially the final round of the 38th round, with an index of 4.1, which is the second lowest score in the year. A La Liga finale with little hatred and pure football dominance is obviously a situation that La Liga wants to see more.

According to data collected by "MOOD", 1 in every 5 comments on social media is still insulting, and this emotion includes anger or sadness. These hate information targets the crowd, covering all participants in the game: referees, players, club executives.

In addition to the decrease in hate speech, positive emotions such as "pride" and "expect" are increasing on social media. In the 2024-25 season, positive sentiment on social media increased exponentially, with fans increasing their sense of belonging to the club and La Liga by 125%, and “expectation” sentiment increased by 109%. These positive comments will also be significantly improved on specific match days or major events, such as Vallecano's qualifying for the Euro Cup playoffs, or Real Oviedo's promotion to La Liga.

In this season, nearly 1 million positive comments have appeared on social media remarks about La Liga, with the most expressing "pride" (424,000), followed by "joy" (177,000), "passion" (112,000), "desire" (111,000), and "admiration" (12,000) and "expectation" (7,200).

to fight hatred, and the La Liga cooperated with relevant departments in the 2024-25 season to work with the Spanish Ministry of Inclusion, Social Security and Immigration to jointly rectify hate speech. "Our message is clear: social media cannot be used as a tool to vent hatred or promote racism without consequences. The dialogue on the Internet can be beneficial or harmful. Therefore, we must work together to resist these harmful remarks," said La Liga President Tevas.

However, there is still a long way to go to achieve this goal. The highest round of the "MOOD" index this season appeared in the 8th round, and the Madrid derby was full of topics in that round, with an index of up to 8.4. In the first round of the national derby, "MOOD" detected 31,250 racist remarks, and the round index also reached 7.1.

With the help of this tool, La Liga also played a more active role in this struggle, assumed corresponding responsibilities, and took action. The ultimate goal of this project is to build a more inclusive and hate-free society.

"This is our goal. Although we know there is still a long way to go, we will continue to work through the project to try our best to clear the hatred from the social network and the hatred inside the court. We are going further towards the goal of ‘Social Network 0 Hate’ every day. "Jose Montero, director of public affairs and institutional relations at La Liga, expressed this vision. At the same time, he also said, "In La Liga, we strive to practice the slogan - 'United to unite and oppose racism. ’We know very well that only by working together with all parties can a sports environment without hatred and violence be achieved. ”

This season, La Liga continued to charge of racist incidents in the league, and some historical judicial judgments have been released. Under the existing legal framework, multiple rulings have been made, conveying a clear message: whether racism occurs on the court or on social networks, those who commit these actions will be held accountable.