Football has embraced the issue of diversity, though not without controversy. But how do online communities respond to these efforts? An analysis of several thousand social media posts reveals a more nuanced reality: in the eyes of the public, not all forms of diversity are received in the same way.
Nelson Mandela famously said that “sport has the power to unite people in a way that little else does.” This ideal lies at the heart of FIFA’s message for the 2026 FIFA World Cup, presented as a celebration of unity, diversity, and inclusion.
The tournament itself reflects this ambition: a significant share of players now represent a country other than the one in which they were born, illustrating the impact of migration and the rise of multiple identities in modern football. A case in point is provided by the French team.
Polarised social issues
But this symbolism comes with tensions. Against a global backdrop of debates over
immigration, national identity, and LGBTQ+ rights, the World Cup continues to generate controversy, whether over the visa of a Somali referee, fans’ travel, or Iran’s participation. As with the debate surrounding the “OneLove” armband at the 2022 World Cup, football remains a central arena where broader, and often polarised, societal issues come into sharp focus.
These discussions do not stop at the stadium. They continue across social media, where every post, campaign, or public statement is instantly amplified, commented on, and debated at great speed. In this environment, football associations, sponsors, and brands benefit from unprecedented visibility but also face increased exposure to public reactions. This raises a fundamental question: how can organisations communicate effectively about diversity and inclusion in such a fragmented and polarised space?
Is diversity a disadvantage on social media?
To answer this question, we analysed more than 6,000 Facebook and Instagram posts published by nine European football associations. Drawing on interviews with industry experts, we identified seven dimensions of diversity and inclusion: gender, race and ethnicity, age, disability, religion and culture, sexual orientation, and social class.
Taken as a whole, posts related to diversity appear to generate fewer interactions, on average, than other types of content. This finding, consistent with some earlier studies, could easily lead to the simplistic conclusion that diversity is somehow ‘penalised’ on social media. Such an interpretation, however, would be misleading.
A closer look at the individual dimensions reveals a much more nuanced pattern of audience responses. Posts highlighting gender or age diversity tend to generate lower engagement on average. By contrast, posts depicting racial diversity receive more positive engagement on both Facebook and Instagram. These important differences help explain why previous research has often reached conflicting conclusions: some studies focus on a single dimension of diversity, while others combine them into a single measure.
Our findings show that diversity and inclusion are not a homogeneous concept but rather a set of distinct dimensions that can trigger very different social, emotional, and cultural responses, depending on the audience.
A communication challenge
These findings shift the central question. It is no longer whether organisations should communicate about diversity and inclusion, but how they can do so in ways that are both relevant and sensitive to context.
First, organisations need to move beyond generic messages about inclusion and identify precisely which dimensions of diversity they are highlighting in their communications.
Audience responses depend heavily on cultural context, industry, and the implicit norms of each online community. A consumer brand, a technology company, or a university may, therefore, observe very different or even opposite patterns of audience response. The challenge is not to follow a universal formula, but to understand the expectations and sensitivities of one’s own audience.
Second, it is essential to distinguish between communication and impact. Content in which diversity is integrated naturally into everyday communication tends to perform better than content that relies primarily on explicit campaigns, slogans, or dedicated hashtags. This does question the legitimacy of taking a public stand. Rather, it suggests that its effectiveness depends largely on its consistency with the brand’s broader narrative and on its integration into content that audiences perceive as authentic.
Subtle effects that should not be overlooked
Third, organisations should move beyond a purely quantitative view of social media engagement. Although some diversity-related content may generate fewer likes or comments, it can still produce a more subtle, but strategically important, effect: changing the composition of the engaged audience. Our exploratory analyses suggest that certain types of content attract more diverse audiences across different identity dimensions. In other words, the value of these communications lies not only in the volume of interactions they generate, but also in their ability to broaden and diversify the audience that engages with them, an increasingly important objective for organisations.
With the 2026 FIFA World Cup in full swing, football continues to spark debates about identity, belonging, and representation that extend far beyond the pitch. These discussions will take place as much on social media as in stadiums, with every public statement immediately interpreted and debated in environments that are often highly polarised.
For sports associations and brands alike, the challenge is no longer to decide whether diversity belongs in their communications. Rather, it is to recognise that diversity is multidimensional, audiences are heterogeneous, and the success of a communication strategy cannot be reduced to short-term engagement metrics alone.
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