With the FIFA World Cup beginning this weekend, NIF’s Let’s Kick Racism Out of Football (KIO) held a special broadcast day conference and event in cooperation with Israel’s leading sports channel ONE. The conference discussed the core issues confronting the campaign with sessions on gender; sexism and soccer; homophobia in the stadiums; and racism and violence in Israeli sports.

ONE broadcasts live soccer matches on TV, has Israel’s second most visited website and has more than 250,000 followers on Facebook and the special broadcast day event was shown on all three of ONE’s digital channels. Participants in the event included top players and former players — Jews and Arabs, male and female — and leading figures in Israeli soccer.

KIO Israel director Matan Segal said, “After 20 years in which KIO Israel has made enormous strides in eradicating racism from Israeli soccer, we have organized the first broadcast event on the subject. I’m certain that this will become an annual event and concrete tool for exposing fans to these burning issues in Israeli society and promoting discussions on the subject as it manifests itself in Israeli soccer.”