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Her Game Too: The Campaign Making Football Safer for Women
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Her Game Too: The Campaign Making Football Safer for Women
Every matchday, millions of women walk into football stadiums, open their social feeds, or tune into a broadcast. Too many of them encounter the same thing — sexist comments, dismissive replies, abuse aimed at the simple act of caring about the sport. In May 2021, a small group of female football fans in Bristol decided they had had enough. They called their campaign Her Game Too, and within two years it reshaped the conversation about misogyny in English football.
This page explains what Her Game Too is, the numbers behind the movement, how the campaign grew from a single Bristol Rovers banner to partnerships with over 70 professional clubs, and why Women Live Score stands behind it.
In the spring of 2021, twelve Bristol Rovers supporters — among them Caz May and Lucy Ford — began trading stories about what it was like to be a woman in a football crowd. The stories were depressingly similar: being questioned about offside rules, being groped in the concourse, being told online that their opinions did not count. Rather than letting those moments pass as “part of football culture”, the group filmed a short video. Each founder read a real comment they had received, then looked into the camera and said the phrase that would become a movement: Her game too.
The video reached more than a million views in its first week. Within weeks Bristol Rovers became the first English Football League club to sign a formal partnership with the campaign, displaying Her Game Too messaging on pitch-side LED boards during matchdays. From there the movement grew quickly — first across the EFL, then into the Premier League, then into cricket, rugby and beyond. By the time the campaign marked its second anniversary in 2023 it counted more than 70 professional sports clubs among its partners, including Everton (the first Premier League club to sign up in May 2023), Liverpool, Reading Women (the first WSL partner), and Bristol Bears in rugby union. In August 2023 the campaign opened a dedicated training centre in Cardiff so that partner clubs could train stewards and matchday staff on how to recognise and respond to sexist abuse.
Her Game Too is today led by Co-Founder and Director Emily Drakeley and Director Roopa Vyas, but its original point — that women should not have to earn their place at a match — has not changed.
In July 2021, just two months after launching, the campaign published the results of a survey it had run among female football fans. The responses were stark.
Follow-up surveys over the next two years produced similar figures and consistently showed one thing: the more visible a woman becomes in football — as a pundit, a referee, a writer, a player — the more abuse she attracts. The campaign has used that data to push for two structural changes. First, for sexist abuse in stadiums to be treated the same way as racist abuse is today: recorded, reported, and sanctioned. Second, for sexist abuse online to be covered by the UK’s Football Banning Orders. The issue was raised in a UK parliamentary debate on football governance in April 2022, in part thanks to evidence collected by the campaign.
None of this data is comfortable reading. It is, however, the reason a small grassroots campaign was able to move clubs, leagues and lawmakers so quickly — there was simply no credible argument that the problem did not exist.
Women Live Score is a dedicated platform for women’s football. Everything we publish — live scores, fixtures, match reports, season previews, player news — exists because we believe the women’s game deserves the same coverage, the same detail and the same respect as the men’s game. That is not a marketing line. It shows up in how we actually work.
We link to Her Game Too from our About page, from our editorial policy, and from our site footer. Every reader who cares enough to follow that link is someone who can become the next ally of the campaign.
Her Game Too is a grassroots organisation. It runs on volunteers, donations and partnership fees, not on a large corporate budget. The most useful things a supporter can do are also the simplest.
If you are a fan.
If you run a club, league or media outlet.
Women Live Score will continue to cover the campaign’s partnerships, research and activations as editorial news. If you are a club signing on, a player speaking up or a researcher publishing new data, we would like to hear about it — write to us at womenlivescore@gmail.com.
Her Game Too is a UK-based campaign against sexism and misogyny in football, founded in May 2021 by a group of twelve female Bristol Rovers supporters. It partners with professional sports clubs to raise awareness, train matchday staff and push for sexist abuse to be treated the same way as other forms of discrimination.
Twelve Bristol Rovers supporters launched the campaign in May 2021. Caz May and Lucy Ford are among the founding members most publicly associated with it. The organisation is today led by Co-Founder and Director Emily Drakeley alongside Director Roopa Vyas.
By mid-2023 the campaign counted more than 70 professional partners. They include Bristol Rovers (the first, in July 2021), Everton (the first Premier League club, May 2023), Liverpool, Reading Women (the first WSL club), and a long list of EFL, National League and non-football partners in cricket and rugby.
In a 2021 survey of 371 female football fans, 91.9 % said they had witnessed online sexist abuse aimed at a woman in football, and 63.1 % said they had experienced such abuse themselves. Roughly 90 % of the wider respondent pool had encountered sexism either at the match, in the pub, or online.
No. The campaign was started by women who follow men’s football and who experience sexism in male-dominated fan cultures. Its partnerships span both men’s and women’s football, as well as cricket and rugby. The point is that the game is for everyone — men’s or women’s — and the abuse needs to be addressed wherever it appears.
We link to the campaign from our homepage footer, our About page, and our editorial policy. We commit to inclusive editorial standards, we moderate the spaces we control, and we amplify the campaign’s partnerships and research in our reporting.
The campaign’s full site is at hergametoo.co.uk. If you have experienced sexist abuse at a football match in the UK, the Kick It Out reporting app accepts reports for all forms of discrimination.