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Football fan ban: Misleading hyperbole like "the Stadium Stasi" will not help the defence of free speech, and distracts us from asking more serious questions about censorship and social exclusion

In the UK, the Free Speech Union (FSU) have gone public with what they claim is evidence of a ‘secret intelligence agency’ operating from within the Premier League, the organisation that oversees Britain’s top flight football clubs.

As stated by Toby Young, the founder of the Free Speech Union, in a video on the issue:

“If you think the Premier League isn’t interested in the political views of football fans, think again.”

In the FSU video, Young explains that Newcastle United Football Club have banned one of their fans after the Premier League conducted a ‘secret’ investigation into her behaviour. The ban, according to the claims in the following video from the Free Speech Union, brings to light the existence of a hitherto unknown intelligence unit at the Premier League, investigating fans for what they post and share online.

From the video:

We’ve discovered there’s a secret intelligence agency embedded in the Premier League whose job it is to spy on football fans, to monitor their social media accounts, to find out if they’re engaging in wrongthink, and if they are, that agency passes on that information to Premier League clubs and those fans can find themselves banned from stadiums. This is the story of the Stadium Stasi.

The fan in question, Linzi Smith, has been doing the rounds in the press since the video dropped, and receiving a fair amount of trolling in the process. Her description of trying to fend off the investigation and argue her side is more emotional in the video, but the words are powerful on their own as well:

I even said to them on the phone, my political views have nothing at all to do with you and they just kind of laughed me off and went and done it anyway…Everything I’ve said has just been ignored, or batted away, or I’ve been made out to be like I’m lying.

Linzi goes on to describe the ‘file’ that the Premier League compiled on her, which included a report on its investigation:

They basically referred to me as a ‘target’, they’ve tried to find my identity, they tried to find where I live, they even went as far as to get screenshots of my Twitter, they searched in the search bar “I live” to find anywhere I’ve said where I live, took images of me where I used to walk my dog behind my house, got Google Images of the church there and the park that’s there, I mean, it’s horrible…and I don’t know who’s seeing that information…I don’t know who knows where I live or knows where I walk around…I don’t feel safe.

The obvious emotional distress experienced by Smith is lamentable, and organisations dedicated to defending the public’s right to free speech are essential in a society that values civil liberties. In this specific case, however, the story is more complicated (and more interesting) than the “Stadium Stasi” headlines have suggested.

According to readily available information online, the Premier League does not operate a ‘secret intelligence agency’ tasked with finding, investigating, and punishing football fans for what they say. Since June 2020, they have had a well-documented, publicly acknowledged portal on their website, Report Racism, through which incidents of discriminatory abuse can be reported. On the portal’s web page, it is clearly stated: “Each case will be investigated by the League’s specialist team.”

The League’s ‘specialist team’ operates from within the legal department, and is by all accounts a reactive rather than proactive body. It does not originate investigations but rather follows up on complaints made through the portal in order to determine the facts of individual cases. The investigations are conducted through gathering open-source intelligence publicly available online and the team then returns a report (the ‘file’ referred to by Smith in the video above) to the complainant, who is ultimately responsible for any decision to take action.

The foundational purpose of the portal, and the main focus and work of the team, is the investigation and deterrence of racial abuse against players.

One example of the abuse in question is the recent case of Ivan Toney, a Brentford FC player who received racist abuse on Instagram. From the article, dated 7 February 2024:

The Premier League will continue to support Ivan Toney via its dedicated online abuse reporting system, which was launched in June 2020 to support players, managers, match officials and their family members who receive discriminatory online abuse. The service enables those affected to notify the Premier League of abuse received via direct and open messages on social media platforms.

Toney has unfortunately been through this before. In 2023, a previous case involving an abusive message to Toney was successfully prosecuted. From the article, dated 14 March 2023:

The Premier League, working with the club, player and the police, investigated the message which was treated as a hate crime and was traced to a suspect in the North Shields area of the UK.

The outcome of the case was a guilty plea by the defendant, who received “a three-year football banning order – the first of its kind to be issued under the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022.”

The article goes on to point out a key aspect of the 2022 Act:

The legislation widened the scope for banning orders to be issued for online hate crimes relating to a person with a prescribed connection to a football organisation.

Multiple studies and sources show that the majority (60 - 80%) of racial abuse aimed at UK-based footballers comes from outside of the UK, and the Premier League has cultivated a long arm. In 2021, for example, a teenager in Singapore was successfully prosecuted there for threatening a Brighton & Hove player and his family on Instagram.

Responding to the outcome of the trial in Singapore, Brighton’s chief executive Paul Barber said:

This demonstrates that even where posts are anonymous, we will use all available legal resources to identify perpetrators…

On our own channels, users will be banned, reported to the platform owners, and reported to the police where they have broken the law.

This now brings us back to the case of Linzi Smith.

In her specific case, a complaint was made to Newcastle United, which was forwarded to the Premier League for investigation. The team at the Premier League conducted an investigation using open-source methods, returned a report to the club, and the club then decided to take action.

The club’s decision to ban Smith for three years could very well be related to the precedent set by the Toney case in 2023, which was heard by magistrates in Newcastle.

Most coverage of Smith’s case describes a shadowy spy agency victimising a random football fan who they found on social media saying things they didn’t like.

In reality, the questions that arise from this situation are perhaps queasier than that:

Has a well-intentioned system put in place in 2020, to curb racial harassment of players, become a catch-all for speech-related complaints from any aggrieved party?

Has the revision of legislation and the successful prosecution of overt racism widened the scope of what can be considered punishable speech to an unacceptable degree?

Are football clubs and other organisations setting speech guidelines based on genuine safety concerns or merely the popularity or tastefulness of what is said?

Can there be a balance between the well-being of the complainant and the need for a society in which people can speak freely even when it is unwelcome?

Is social exclusion being used as a back-door method to punish legal speech?

In the case of Linzi Smith, the argument against her is that her statements, deemed problematic by the original complainant and Newcastle United, are serious enough to merit her exclusion from the club’s grounds for three years. The argument in her favour is that she said nothing illegal, she was not accused of having made her ‘problematic’ statements on club grounds, and there was no reason to believe that she posed a risk or danger to fellow fans at matches.

Framing it like that, even in her defence, could be a step too far, as it begs the fundamental free speech question: Can words, written or spoken, constitute real harm?

These are difficult, thorny, challenging questions made even more pressing by the ramping up of legislation around the world aimed at further restricting the parameters of speech.

Those who live in countries with organisations like the Free Speech Union or the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression are fortunate to have organisations dedicated to demanding debate and argument over restrictions on speech, and challenging punishment for speech. It is easily overlooked or forgotten that, once limits on speech are accepted in principle, the goalposts can move in unexpected directions.

It does not take the existence of a “Stadium Stasi” to justify scrutiny of fan bans. Free speech is a vital question for society, and it serves no-one to resort to hyperbole and exaggeration when the stakes are already so high and the dangers so clear and present.

Note: Newcastle United Football Club were contacted for comment but did not respond in time.