The English Football Association are currently running a ‘let's kick racism out of football’ campaign, highlighting the racial issues in sport. This campaign attempts to remove racial exclusion within football which still occurs today. A recent example includes racial abuse that was hurled at Mario Balotelli in Italy’s friendly against Romania in Austria in November 2010.

Under-Represented and Over-Represented

The campaign also asks the question of why black minority and ethnic groups are so disproportionately under-represented in some sports and then over-represented in others as it attempts to get more BME groups involved in sport.

The official USA Olympic swimming team website explains how in the entire 2008 team, which included 44 athletes, only one of them was black. However, from the players list on NBA.com, it shows that 80-90% of players are black. This is astonishing as African Americans only make up 13% of the US population. These participation patterns in certain sports can be seen to be influenced by many factors including ideology, history and social factors.