Stop zooming in on “hot women”- FIFA to broadcasters

Broadcasters have been ordered to stop their cameras zooming in on “hot women” in the crowd at football matches, Fifa’s diversity boss says.

Federico Addiechi said football’s world governing body needed to help tackle sexism at the World Cup.

“We’ve done it with individual broadcasters. We’ve done it with our host broadcast services,” he said.

Anti-discrimination group Fare Network says sexism has been the biggest problem at Russia 2018.

It has been monitoring games and says it has “documented more than 30 cases”.

Asked if the crackdown on cutaways of female fans would become official Fifa policy, Addiechi said: “This is one of the activities we definitely will have in future – it’s a normal evolution.”

He said it was not yet a “proactive campaign” but said Fifa would “take action against things that are wrong”.

Before the tournament there were concerns that homophobia and racism would be the major areas of concern but Fare Network executive director Piara Powar said sexism was the main focus of discrimination logged by his team – mainly of Russian women being “accosted in the streets” by male fans.

However, Powar believes the real number of incidents is likely to be “10 times this”.

Powar added there had been several cases of female reporters being grabbed or kissed whilst on air.

When asked how Fifa could combat this, Addiechi said it has been working with the local organisers and Russian police to identify these fans, some of whom have lost their FAN-IDs (a document all spectators must have to obtain access to stadiums at the World Cup) and been forced to leave the country.

During Russia 2018 photographic agency Getty Images published a photo gallery of “the hottest fans at the World Cup” featuring exclusively young women.

The gallery was later removed by Getty, who said that it was a “regrettable error in judgement” and that an internal investigation would be made. (BBC Sport)