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Executive summaryThis study was commissioned by the KingBaudouin Foundation (KBF) with the objectiveof studying the current state of discriminationin sport in Europe. It was conductedbetween July 2012 and March 2013 in 11European countries. It was implemented bySchwery Consulting, a social enterpriseworking in the field of sport and corporatesocial responsibility with a specific focus oneastern Europe.Research looked at discrimination on thebasis of race, religion, ethnicity, nationalityand gender. It examined the barriers preventingchildren and young adolescents(here, people aged between 10 and 14) fromparticipating in organised and non-organisedsports.MethodologyQualitative and quantitative research toolswere applied to ensure that the findings hada solid scientific grounding. An innovativetechnique – the Crowdsourced ResearchTool (CRTOOL) – was piloted in order tosecure first-hand accounts from young peopleregarding their attitudes and experiencesin the area of discrimination in sport. TheCRTOOL consisted of an interactive onlinesurvey and a managed discussion forum,with a special effort made to make it fun. Onepositive side-effect of this research tool wasthat the children were able to gain experienceof using social media.Each country provided a sample comprisingroughly 120 children, with 1,233 participantsin total. The discussions on the online forumwere often quite passionate, with childrenfrom Netherlands, for example, contributing276 comments to a discussion thread in thespace of just one month.In addition to the survey and the discussionforum, semi-structured qualitative interviewswere conducted with experts andproject officers. Interviews were conductedwith a total of 47 people, during which detailsof 44 good practices were collected. Most ofthe interviews took longer than the allocatedtime, demonstrating the interviewees’ enthusiasmfor this subject.As far as the authors are aware, this is thefirst report presenting comparative empiricaldata on the topic of discrimination insport among young people in Europe. It concludeswith a set of recommendations developedfor sports organisers, schools, NGOsand researchers, as well as the private andpublic sectors.Discrimination in sport based on race,religion, ethnicity and nationalityThe study showed that, in general, Europe’syoung people are not racist. Four out of fivechildren and young adolescents surveyedhave friends with a different skin colour;82% think that “it is good to have playerswith different skin colours in the same footballteam”, and there is no disparity betweenboys and girls regarding this attitude.However, the fight against racism remainsan ongoing task. 16% of respondents feeldiscriminated against because of their skincolour or religion. One in ten has been avictim of a racist incident. These figuresdouble for young people from a migrantbackground. A tendency towards racismin young people is often a consequence ofsocialising with a peer group that is influencedby organised racist groups. To counteractthis, face-to-face work is recommendedto identify dissonance between attitudesand behaviour and offer non-racist alternativeswith the same “fun factor”.During difficult economic times there is anincreasing tendency towards discrimination,which is often aggravated by budget cutsfor inclusive initiatives. Experts agree thatDISCRIMINATION IN SPORTKING BAUDOUIN FOUNDATIONi