Men Don’t Like Activism. Why Is There So Much of It in the Sports They Watch?

Adjusting to the Post-Mainstream Media era

Photo by Joshua Hoehne on Unsplash

Last week I wrote about the liberal/ progressive/ left-wing struggle to understand men and cajole them back into their coalition. Part of that struggle is that male audiences have withdrawn to what are considered less mainstream spaces, and are therefore harder to reach. You never have to wait too long for concrete examples of how and why that process of withdrawal and consolidation happens and we got one this week in the world of football.

The captains of two Premier League teams are in the spotlight for their choices as the competition celebrates LGBTQ+ inclusion in its campaign to promote equality and diversity.

Rainbow-colored captain armbands were issued to the 20 clubs for matches last weekend and the current midweek round.

Ipswich’s Sam Morsy has been the only captain in action who didn’t wear the rainbow armband, in games against Nottingham Forest on Saturday and Crystal Palace on Tuesday.

For the game against Ipswich, Guehi’s message on the rainbow armband read, “Jesus loves you” — again using a heart sign. It raises the prospect of the player being sanctioned by the FA for defying its rules.

The league’s Rainbow Laces campaign, introduced in 2013, is in partnership with LGBTQ+ charity Stonewall and includes a range of activities to “highlight community and education initiatives designed to encourage discussion and promote allyship with LGBTQ+ communities,” the competition said. Rainbow Laces branding is widely visible within stadiums on things like corner flags and ball plinths.

As with many other mainstream sports there has been a consolidated effort over the last while to draw in women to the world of football as consumers and participants. This has been hugely successful as the growth in viewership for tournaments like the Women’s World Cup shows. The Premier League itself however is still overwhelmingly male at every level - stats of the last two years show that 81% Premier League attendees are male, 70% of Premier League viewers are male, and men are twice as likely as women to support Premier league teams.

Since it’s mostly men that support the teams, watch the matches, and go to the games, do they like this style of activism epitomised by the armbands? One of the most comprehensive polls conducted on this recently was the Ipsos 2024 Pride Survey which was conducted on more than 18,000 people across 26 countries and found that:

58% of Gen Z women support companies and brands actively promoting equality for LGBT people vs. only 37% of Gen Z men. There’s a similar divide when it comes to having more LGBT characters on TV, in films and in advertising, with 51% of Gen Z women in support of this vs. just 33% of Gen Z men… Women (are also) more likely than men to support trans athletes competing based on the gender they identify with (37% vs 28% amongst Gen Z).