Coming Out to Play
Putting the LGBT+ into FIFA, NBA and IOC
This week, Jake Daniels, a 17 year old Blackpool forward, became the first male professional footballer to come out in England in 32 years (since Justin Fashanu in 1990)
This followed Josh Cavallo who came out last year and became the only male footballer playing in a top league to be openly gay
Jake Daniels became the first male professional footballer to come out in England in 32 years
But how does this compare to other sports?
- Women’s football is considered to have a much better culture of inclusivity. For example, there were 40 ‘out’ participants of the FIFA Women’s World Cup in 2019
- In men’s sport, Rugby Union has a couple of high-profile LGBTQ+ names (such as Nigel Owen and Gareth Thomas), but no current players who are openly gay
- Men’s Cricket has only 1 ‘out’ international player, England’s Steven Davies who came out in 2014 (women’s cricket has a much higher number of ‘out’ players)
American Sports have a marginally better record:
- Last year, Carl Nassib was the first openly gay man to come out during their American Football career (along with 15 others who had come out following their retirement)
- Men’s Baseball has had 9 players come out (although most have found it a detriment to their careers)
- Basketball has 8 male players who are openly gay, although most either didn’t make it to the top division (the NBA) or came out after retirement
Most fans are supportive of gay players, with a BBC survey in 2016 showing that 82% of supporters across all sports in Britain would have no issue with a gay player
Despite this, coming out can still be daunting. The same BBC survey showed 8% of fans would stop supporting their team if one of their players came out, and 47% of respondents to another survey said they’d heard homophobic abuse at sports matches (this was 50% for football)
The Olympics, however, is one place where LGBTQ+ participation and success has been strongest:
- At least 186 ‘out’ LGBTQ+ athletes competed at the Tokyo Olympic, more than 3x the number who competed in Rio de Janeiro in 2016 (56)
- 30 countries had LGBTQ+ representatives at the games with the USA leading on 36 ‘out’ athletes, followed by Brazil (18), Canada (18), Netherlands (17) and the UK (16)
- As with football, there was a 9–1 ratio of LGBTQ+ women vs. men, with women’s soccer alone having 40 ‘out’ players across the competition
- And a number of these athletes were successful, with 55 ‘out’ competitors winning a medal across 35 different sports (if they all competed as one team, they would have come 11th)
- Considering there are over 1,000 medals awarded in all competitions (and over 10,000 athletes), it could be argued that the 186 ‘out’ athletes were relatively more successful than their straight competitors
However, while competing as a Gay athlete does appear to be getting easier, the news for Trans athletes is more mixed
In 2020, Rugby Union became the first sport to stop transgender women competing in Elite and International women’s matches. Although earlier this year, the IOC changed its guidance on Trans competitors, saying that it should not be assumed that transgender athletes have an unfair advantage. This places more responsibility on individual sports federations to decide the extent to which trans athletes can compete
Source: Human Rights Campaign; Out Sports Olympics; Out Sports World Cup; Out Sports NFL; Pink News; Players Bio Baseball; The Sportster NBA; The Wisden Cricket; BBC survey; Where IG; Top End Sports; BBC Transgender; BBC IOC
