Download this case study to understand how Kick It Out - a not for profit organization championing equality throughout soccer in the UK - used Brandwatch Analytics to track over 400,000 abusive mentions on Twitter and: Earned more than 900 published articles in newspapers and online, revealing the true extent of the abuse to millions of people around the world Provoked over 100,000 conversations about the research online, helping generate debate and awareness of a key issue for the organization Helped the organization understand the scale of abusive social mentions and the real nature of the task facing the entity

1. Case Study/
Kick It Out
Tackling unprecedented levels
of social media abuse

2. Case Study/ Kick It Out Case Study/ Kick It Out
Key Results
• Led to more than 900 published
articles in newspapers and online,
revealing the problem to millions of
people around the world
• Provoked over 100,000
conversations about the research
online, helping generate debate and
awareness of a key issue for the
organisation
• Helped the organisation understand
the scale of abusive social mentions
and the real nature of the task facing
the entity
Background
Kick It Out
Kick It Out is English football’s (more commonly known as soccer
in North America) equality and inclusion organisation, founded
in 1993.
Working throughout the football, educational and community
sectors, to challenge discrimination, encourage inclusive
practices and campaign for positive change.
During the 2012/2013 season, Kick It Out started to see a
soaring rise in social media abuse towards footballers, clubs and
fans. Internally, they were seeing the problem grow in scale and
complexity with abuse ranging from sexist to anti-semitic. They
decided in January 2015 to reveal the scale of this problem to the
general public by recruiting two leaders in social media analytics.
kickitout.org
Tempero
The world's largest full-service social media management agency,
teamed up with Brandwatch, the leading choice in social media
monitoring, to collect and report on the scale of social media
abuse within the Premier League. Their report, released in April
2015, revealed some horrifying truths behind the problem and
helped educate the millions of people who read the results.
tempero.co.uk
At a Glance/
Kick It Out
400,000
abusive mentions
Collected
and analyzed over
The Story/
Tackling Abuse on
Social Media
The Goal
Provide clarity and awareness on social media abuse.
Kick It Out has been handling complaints about football-related hate crime posted on social media platforms since the 2012/2013
football season.
Kick It Out knew this abuse was a growing problem. They’d seen the volume of inbound complaints about abuse grow over the last
three years. With no insight on the abuse that did not get reported to the organisation, the body decided to investigate the true
extent of the issue by tracking and analysing abusive online comments.
Kick It Out wanted to use these insights to drive awareness and understanding, informing their own strategies and to help put a
stop to this abuse for good.
The Challenge
Understand an issue growing at an unprecedented scale.
Kick It Out wanted to identify to what degree clubs and players within the English Premier League are victims of discriminatory
abuse on social media platforms.
They were eager to understand which football clubs received the majority of the abuse, what forms of discrimination were the most
common, where in the country the abuse was predominantly coming from, and whether there were spikes in abuse relating to
specific fixtures or incidents occurring in specific games.
To do so, Kick It Out and Tempero (the agency enlisted to carry out the research) needed a powerful social listening platform to filter
through the millions of football related tweets, posts and comments on social to locate only the abusive mentions.
The Solution
Educate millions through awareness.
Brandwatch was perfect for this research. The functionality that was most vital was the flexibility of the Query builder, combined with
the data segmentation ability of Rules, Tags and Categories.
This research required the tracking of 20 Premier League football teams, more than 400 individual player names and nicknames and
hundreds of abusive terms. The advanced boolean Operators allowed Tempero to create several large, complex Queries in the most
efficient way possible. Rules, Tags and Categories enabled Tempero to segment the results into distinct teams, specific players, and
to group the abuse received into types such as racism, sexism and islamophobia — and instantly start analyzing for comparisons.

3. Case Study/ Kick It Out
CASES OF ABUSE ON SOCIAL MEDIA
Man. CityMan. UnitedArsenalLiverpoolChelsea
FOOTBALL TEAMS
0
2000
4000
6000
8000
10000
12000
14000
16000
18000
20000
22000
MENTIONS
MOST ABUSED PLAYERS ON SOCIAL MEDIA
1. Mario Balotelli: 8,471 (race) 2. Danny Welbeck: 1,744 (race) 3. Daniel Sturridge: 1,611 (sexual orientation)
5. Yaya Toure: 1,482 (race)4. Didier Drogba: 1,513 (race)
TOURE YAYA
1482
MAN. CITY
STURRIDGE
1611
LIVERPOOL
DROGBA
1513
CHELSEA
WELBECK
1744
ARSENAL
BALOTELLI
8471
LIVERPOOL
Report unveils findings of research into football-related
hate crime on social media.
Kicking Out Abuse,
For Good/
Players
The professional player most abused
on social media during the study was
Liverpool striker Mario Balotelli.
Balotelli was sent more than 8,000
discriminatory posts on social media,
of which more than half were racist, a
truly horrific discovery.
Race wasn’t the only form of abuse the
report unearthed. Balotelli’s teammate
Daniel Sturridge was another victim.
During the study over 1,600
discriminatory posts were aimed at the
English international, over 60% of those
posts were abusing him on the grounds
of sexual orientation.
Matches
The report also looked into which
particular matches drove the largest
volume of discriminatory mentions.
The Chelsea vs Liverpool clash on
January 27th at Chelsea's home ground
Stamford Bridge saw over 2,633 abusive
messages posted online.
Clubs
The top five Premier League clubs
who received the most discriminatory
abuse were Chelsea, Liverpool,
Arsenal, Manchester United and
Manchester City.
Chelsea received the largest proportion
of abusive posts with over 20,000
messages; Liverpool, 19,000; Arsenal,
12,000; Manchester United and
Manchester City, with 11,000 each.
The Reaction
The research itself unsurprisingly
resonated strongly with the football
community. The results sparked
debate throughout the UK and beyond.
The media, fans and equal rights
groups all showed tremendous interest
and support towards the campaign,
helping to spread the message.
In the three days following the public
release of the study, the research
generated more than 108,000 mentions
online. The research and its findings
earned coverage on publications such as
BBC, The Guardian, CNN, Mashable and
many other top news outlets, as well as
request for interviews on TalkSport Radio,
Al Jazeera, BBC News TV and ITV.
The research has given the wider public a
better understanding of the issue. The
work being led by Kick It Out in this area,
the reporting procedures in place enabling
social media users to register complaints,
and the need for collective responsibility
to be taken by the main bodies across
football, the police and social media
platforms, to confront the problem.
The Future
The aim of the research was to provoke
awareness and educate the footballing
community. This report has helped but
there’s still work to be done.
Kick It Out has recommended setting up
an expert group to look at the best way
forward and fortunately, with the
awareness this research has provided,
genuine steps in that direction are
being made.
The Report
The findings of the report identified
the most common forms of
discrimination posted across social
media towards clubs and players, and
how frequently the abuse occurred.
The report also looked at which clubs
were the main targets for abuse, and
further investigation was undertaken
on specific players.
“Not only do they have a best
in class social monitoring
platform, the people at
Brandwatch are heavily
involved with the industry,
and care about putting data
to work for social good — a
business ethic that also
drives what Tempero does.”
Mick Conroy
Head of Insights & Innovation
Tempero

4. About/
@brandwatch | Brandwatch Blog | Brandwatch Facebook Page
Kick It Out
Kick It Out is English football’s equality
and inclusion organisation.
Working throughout the football,
educational and community sectors to
challenge discrimination, encourage
inclusive practices and campaign for
positive change.
Since the 2012/2013 season, Kick It Out
started to see a soaring rise in social
abuse towards footballers, clubs and
fans. Internally, they were seeing the
problem grow in scale and complexity
with abuse ranging from sexist to
anti-semitic. They decided in January
2015 to reveal the scale of this problem
to the general public by recruiting two
leaders in social media analytics.
kickitout.org
Tempero
Tempero is the world's largest
full-service social media management
agency offering integrated Strategy,
Insight, Moderation and Engagement
for many of the world's largest brands,
24/7, in multiple languages.
Tempero listens to provide insight and
analysis, they engage to build advocacy,
and they protect against reputation
damage. Tempero are the engine behind
multi-language, multi-platform,
multi-territory social media activity.
tempero.co.uk
Brandwatch
Brandwatch is one of the world’s leading
social intelligence companies. Its social
media listening and analytics technology
platform gathers millions of online
conversations every day and provides
users with the tools to analyze them,
empowering brands and agencies to
make smarter, data-driven business
decisions.
Acquiring social influencer analytics firm
PeerIndex in December 2014,
Brandwatch continues on its aggressive
business trajectory following on its most
recent round of venture funding to the
tune of $22 million. The Brandwatch
platform is used by over 1000 brands
and agencies, including Cisco, Whole
Foods, Whirlpool, British Airways, Sony
Music, Papa John’s, and Dell.
Brandwatch. Now You Know.
brandwatch.com
“Only Brandwatch has this type
of power to query, combine and
segment data — using any
other platform would have
been incredibly onerous.”
Mick Conroy
Head of Insights & Innovation
Tempero