"It's time for the (insert sports league here) annual Pride Round, an initiative to show commitment to the LGBTQIA+ community and help make our sport safe for everyone."
In recent years, many sports leagues and clubs around the world have dropped a line like the above and introduced some form of Pride Round, a celebration of the LGBTQIA+ community and the identities of the people who encompass it.
These events aim to make sports more inclusive because, historically, queer people have been excluded from playing and attending sport at all levels if they were open about who they are.
While this is something that has started to change across sports, there is still plenty of work to be done -- particularly in men's sport -- to make it more inclusive.
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Having a range of initiatives that can be tailored to an individual team is a great way to celebrate, because it doesn't force anything onto a club that it may not be ready for.
Some teams have produced a complete matchday experience and have fully embraced the opportunity to make their spaces safer and more welcoming. Others have made smaller gestures, such as socks and signage, while some have regressed in their showcases. Some teams still refuse to do anything at all.
Progress isn't linear but it's worth asking: what happens when Pride starts to feel stale or forced, or things go awry?
If a club does a little or the bare minimum, while it's better than nothing, how much do they genuinely care? If they regress in their showcases, does it mean they care less than they did previously? Did they even care in the first place or were they simply doing something they thought was expected of them?
In the A-Leagues, the Pride Cup is the centrepiece of the leagues' Pride celebrations, which started in 2021 with an women's and men's doubleheader hosted by Adelaide United.
In the last three seasons, it has become a league-wide initiative and the marquee Pride Cup has been a doubleheader contested by Melbourne Victory and Adelaide United.
However, the 2025 edition, hosted by Victory, started as a well-intentioned initiative that quickly devolved into a ham-fisted fiasco that did more harm than good for the queer community.
The first issue started before either game had kicked off. A small group of the North Terrace leadership -- Melbourne Victory's active support group -- decided not to attend the doubleheader. Instead, they chose to go to an NPL Victoria Men's game in Shepparton involving Victory's youth side, with a banner that read "Ultras, No Politics" on it: an apparent protest against the club's involvement in the Pride Cup.
The issues that did occur at the ground, and were in the club's control, got worse as the day unfolded.
During the pregame warm-up for the women's game, the Victory team sheet deadnamed -- using the name someone was born with instead of their current chosen name -- the same player twice. They were later deadnamed on the auction website for the game-worn jerseys, which was only fixed five days later. Deadnaming anyone at the best of times is inexcusable, but to do so during the club's Pride fixture, particularly when all club communications refer to the player by their correct name, is worse.
Some fans during the A-League Women game, who were wearing previous season's Pride merchandise, were advised to move sections by stadium security, who said they would be at risk of abuse from fellow spectators.
When responding to an open letter signed by fans and members, Melbourne Victory CEO Caroline Carnegie said she would "speak to MSS Security around their conversation for moving you all from the Terrace on the weekend, as we absolutely want all our fans to feel included and safe."
It is also worth noting that the club also didn't have a bespoke jersey this year after previously having one. Instead, the women's team had rainbow numbers on their jerseys, which the players requested themselves.
Victory said they chose "to focus on authentic community engagement, meaningful education and bringing our staff, players and members on a journey" when asked why only the women's side had the numbers.
While the club's continued commitment to the Pride Cup is admirable, their handling of some basic things during the celebration raised questions about whether there is meaningful work going on behind the scenes in terms of ongoing education and support, even if fans don't see that.
Pride Cup CEO Hayley Conway said the education aspect is a critical part of the showcase, rather than just having social media posts and bespoke jerseys for the sake of it.
"Every [A-Leagues] club has the opportunity to do that and they are all supported to do it if they want to," Conway told ESPN.
"I think it's important that we don't create an expectation that a social media post is the thing that makes it genuine.
"The thing that makes inclusion efforts genuine is the education being undertaken. Are the players being given an opportunity to weigh in on that education? Can they access it through their union and their other kinds of support?"
Conway says that for most LGBTQIA+ people, Pride initiatives shouldn't just be about what fans see online or at the game; it should be about genuine engagement -- evidence that is backed up in the Free to Exist report.
"I think that the emphasis the A-Leagues have put on making sure that every club has access to education and the other sort of wraparound activities that occurred is actually a greater reflection of a very meaningful and genuine outreach," she said. "Rather than something that focuses on how many rainbows are there as a sort of standard."
Caitlin Bunker is a co-captain for VFLW side Darebin Falcons, and engagement director at Pride Cup, a club which has a strong inclusive culture for LGBTQIA+ individuals.
She's played Aussie Rules for more than a decade across clubs at both the community and semi-elite level, participating in different Pride rounds or initiatives throughout her career. Bunker says that, as a player, you can feel when the club is meaningfully invested in the initiative. Those that are part of the LGBTQIA+ community particularly feel the support.
"You'll notice that when a club like the Darebin Falcons invest in Pride guernseys, everybody in the club is across why we're doing the initiative," Bunker said. "We do education every single year, regardless of how far in terms of our knowledge and our journey we are. You can really feel that as a player.
"I've been at clubs before who aren't as invested or won't put their money where their mouth is around inclusion. You notice when you have to buy your own socks. You notice when there's no education component tied in with the visibility of the vibrant Pride round.
"[The investment] is something that says to you when you're a queer person [that] you're safe here, we understand you, we want to invest in you, and we want to make sure that you really feel that."
Prior to the 2025 A-Leagues Pride celebrations, the body that runs the competition confirmed that it has developed and delivered training programs in conjunction with the players' union partner, Pride Cup, over the last three-and-a-half years.
"In 2025, the A-Leagues will once again provide LGBTIQ+ inclusion training to all players and key stakeholders. The training content will focus on the challenges faced by LGBTIQ+ supporters and players, and how clubs can support inclusion for everyone regardless of faith, ethnicity, sexual orientation, or gender," the press release said.
Clubs and players are given the option to access education around why LGBTQIA+ inclusion is so important, even if there is nothing external taking place, such as a game-day activation.
Without this education aspect, these Pride rounds can feel like nothing more than "rainbow capitalism," a phenomenon where a company or organisation appropriates the LGBTQIA+ community in order to drive financial gain.
In the NRL, a prime example of this occurred when the Manly Sea Eagles opted to have a Pride jersey in July 2022 for their Round 19 match against the Sydney Roosters.
The problem was the club didn't actually consult the playing group, and just announced it, which saw seven players controversially boycott the game.
From every angle, it was an incredibly disappointing look, especially when the club once employed the only men's NRL player to have come out as gay, Ian Roberts.
At the time, Roberts said he respected the players who chose not to play, and their right not to due to their religious beliefs.
Fans and media debated the decision, some supporting the players actions and others condemning them. But all of this distracted from what the initiative was supposed to be about in the first place: supporting the LGBTQIA+ community. A well-intentioned move ended up having a negative impact, not a positive one.
The constant debating and comments in the vein of "why do we need Pride?" that littered social media and talkback shows told the story of exactly why men's sport has traditionally been, and continues to be, an unwelcome environment for many LGBTQIA+ individuals. It was also further proof of why these initiatives are needed, particularly in men's sport.
It isn't just poorly executed Pride jerseys which show that there is still plenty of work to be done in the space. Anti-gay slurs are prevalent in multiple codes.
The AFL has had a whopping six instances of anti-gay language since 2024, as well as incidents in the top-level state league competitions in Victoria and Western Australia.
North Melbourne coach Alastair Clarkson was fined $20,000 with a suspended two-match ban, before Port Adelaide's Jeremy Finlayson received a three-week ban in Round 4. Gold Coast Sun Wil Powell then received a five-game ban in Round 8, with all three having used anti-gay language.
So far in 2025, West Coast Eagles player Jack Graham was handed a four-game suspension after self-reporting his use of anti-gay language in Round 17, while 20-year-old Riak Andrew received a five-game suspension for using an anti-gay slur in a Sydney Swans VFL game.
Then, just last month, Izak Rankine was then suspended for four matches following an anti-gay slur said in the Crows match against Collingwood.
It took the AFL four days to hand down the suspension in part because Adelaide were arguing for a reduction -- an opportunity no other club was publicly afforded -- in similar cases.
The suspension didn't follow the AFL's own precedent of increasing the punishment for each subsequent case. By doing so, they have left the door open for Rankine to play in the Grand Final.
From the drawn out process to the reduced sanction, it's the LGBTQIA+ community which has been hung out to dry by the AFL's mishandling and the Crows' conduct.
The AFL supported the marriage equality campaign and introduced a new education model for all 787 players and 3,232 officials to complete before the 2025 season began. A Pride Round in the AFLW and a Pride Game in the men's competition, spearheaded by the Sydney Swans, showed the league understands the importance of Pride initiatives and education. But the AFL put on a disaster class in their handling of Rankine's suspension.
Among all the chat about precedents and suspension length, questions must be asked about how the culture of the game encourages this behaviour.
On Aug. 27, former West Coast Eagles player Mitch Brown, who played 94 games from 2007-2016, became the first men's player in the AFL's 129-year history to come out as bisexual.
In an interview with The Daily Aus, Brown said that his decision to come out brought him peace, comfort, and confidence.
He also said having to hide his sexuality because of the AFL's "hyper-masucline" culture was a major factor in his decision to retire in 2016, and wanting to be around a different environment.
"One of the biggest reasons I wanted to finish up playing AFL was to meet new people, to meet a diverse range of people, men and women, different cultural backgrounds, and I craved new conversations. I craved talking to someone and not being judged. I craved the ability to choose who I wanted to be around rather than to fit into a team," he said.
Anti-gay abuse isn't just an AFL problem.
In the NRL, in April 2022, then-Warriors player Marcelo Montoya called North Queensland Cowboys player Kyle Feldt an anti-gay slur, and received a four-match ban.
In 2025, a person attending a St. George Illawarra game was kicked out of the ground after allegedly delivering an anti-gay slur towards referee Peter Gough at half-time.
In 2021, footballer Josh Cavallo made history when he came out as the first active gay male player but was unfortunately subject to anti-gay abuse from the stands while playing for Adelaide United and detailed the threats he has received since.
Away from the field, the A-Leagues have routinely left comments open on its Pride-related posts, allowing hateful comments towards the LGBTQIA+ community to fester, hurting the very people these posts are supposed to help.
For Conway, the response when these things happen at a national level needs to go beyond sanctioning the players. Education needs to happen afterwards and proactive action needs to be taken to change the culture around the sport from the elite level down to the grassroots.
"Once you reach the AFL, you've already been playing footy for at least 16, 17, 18 years," she said.
"What we do see are people who are coming up through environments where they haven't necessarily been told you can't actually use this language."
Conway also said there were cases where the rhetoric used by players wasn't something they actually understood as being anti-gay in nature.
"These are just words that are used to criticise people and criticise play. And so giving all these, in lots of cases, young men the opportunity to learn that and learn it in a way that is not about making them feel ashamed, but about supporting them to change their behaviour and to expect more of themselves and of other people is really key," she added.
Education sessions aren't limited to explaining the importance of language, either. Players and staff are advised on what to do if mistakes are made, such as getting someone's pronouns wrong or mispronouncing someone's name, and how to move on from that in a way that respects and elevates the person impacted.
"We'll travel to that club and at no cost to them, we'll facilitate a session where they can talk about LGBTIQ people, the challenges that we might face in accessing sport, in playing it," Conway said.
"We give them a baseline level of knowledge about different types of LGBTIQ identities and our communities and histories in an intersectional way and then we also practice bystander intervention with them.
"[It's] really giving those clubs the confidence and the skills to do something when something goes wrong or something is happening and to have the confidence in each other that they can create an inclusive environment."
Community engagement and outreach is an incredibly important part of what Pride Cup does. It ensures there is a longer-lasting impact than just the gameday or round itself, and involves getting connected with local LGBTQIA+ organisations, the local council or MPs, and other places where the impact can have a greater effect across the community.
After incidents occur on the national stage, Conway says that Pride Cup does see clubs reach out because they want to create good environments, to work on their inclusivity and be confident they're doing it the right way.
"As we say, this is not something where you can just download a guide on the internet and feel confident you are getting it right," Conway said.
"People really want to make sure they are using the right language [when] speaking about trans people, LGB people, intersex people with respect and knowledge. But that's hard to do if you don't know someone who you feel confident about asking.
"Pride Cup gives them a chance to ask any questions that they have so that they do feel like they are treating the community with the respect and the dignity that we deserve and that they want to give us."
Ultimately, when it comes to Pride initiatives in sport, the intent can't be seen as the driving force. What is well intentioned can often be harmful if not done properly.
Even though these initiatives have a short history, it's time to see them evolve.
It's easy to stick a rainbow on something and say "we're helping," but what are the long-term actions once the final whistle goes and the matchday event is over?
Are there genuine resources in place to help educate? Are clubs reaching out within their community or fan base to help those who need it? Are teams helping their LGBTQIA+ players and staff if they need it?
This is where the evolution needs to take place. There needs to be genuine education involved.
There needs to be community outreach to local LGBTQIA+ organisations and queer fans, and questions need to be asked: "What can we do better to make you feel safe and welcome? How can we help this be authentic? How can we be a genuine ally to the queer community?"
Because if all an organisation or club is doing is sticking a rainbow on some merchandise and looking at it as a way to increase the bottom line, or creating social media posts and advertising campaigns without putting in the real effort to improve the situation behind the scenes, then it's not genuine, and you can't call it allyship.
Picking and choosing when to be an ally when it's convenient is disingenuous, unless someone's personal safety is at risk.
Allyship is grounded in genuine and meaningful support and driving positive change. These sports leagues and teams would do well to remember that.