Football Association of Wales

Online abuse and harmful narratives are growing around international football. As a result, FAW needed a faster, clearer way to protect players’ wellbeing and improve their psychological safety across both the women’s and men’s national teams.

The key pressures FAW face include:

• Responding quickly to harmful content and fast-moving narratives around fixtures.
• Maintaining awareness during high-profile moments, not just after the fact.
• Providing safeguarding and comms teams evidence they can act on, with a clear audit trail.
• Building a consistent, repeatable view of online risk across matches.

As part of their commitment to create a safe, inclusive and welcoming environment across Welsh football, FAW has partnered with Nisien.ai since September 2025. The aim was to develop a football-ready model for online harm intelligence and support the work undertaken for their PAWB EDI Strategy.

The approach combined:

• Using the Hero Platform for always-on, near real-time monitoring of online hate and abuse relating to players and officials (note: data source latency can vary)
• Rapid post-match insight packs delivered within days of fixtures
• Clear categorisation of abuse, misinformation and emerging narratives
• Actionable reporting designed for safeguarding, communications and leadership teams
• Engaging with social media platforms and relevant authorities to actively intervene in online harm where necessary.

For the duration of this partnership, the Hero Platform ran continuously in the background, surfacing emerging risk with insight packs turning those signals into clear decisions.

What we’ve seen so far across the men’s and women’s games monitored since September 2025:

• 75,806 posts analysed
• 50+ players and officials monitored (avg. across squads + staff)
• 265 items escalated for review
• 14.61% average negative content

This gives FAW a baseline they can trust – filtering high volumes of online data into a small, actionable set, and supporting faster, more consistent triage over time. Using the Hero Platform in this way has delivered measurable improvements to FAW’s escalation processes, safeguarding interventions and collaboration with relevant stakeholders.

FAW now benefits from a more proactive, intelligence-led approach to player safeguarding and wellbeing. The ability to better care for and support players is enabled through:

• Faster identification and triage of harmful online behaviour directed at players.
• Clearer visibility of narrative trends affecting players and officials.
• More confident, evidence-based decisions during and after fixtures.
• Scalable coverage across both the women’s and men’s games.
  
  

An improvement in the day-to-day visibility of issues that affect player wellbeing means that FAW no longer relies solely on matchday spikes or retrospective summaries.

Online harm doesn’t stop at the final whistle. FAW’s approach shows how governing bodies can move from reactive reporting to always-on protection and informed intervention – supporting players, officials and the wider game when the pressure is at its highest.

The equation is simple; always-on monitoring + rapid insight = earlier detection and better decisions.

“This work is a key part of the Football Association of Wales ‘PAWB EDI Strategy’ and our commitment to creating safe, inclusive and welcoming environments across Welsh football. Monitoring online abuse is not just about visibility; it is about taking timely, informed action to protect our players, staff and officials.

Our partnership with Nisien has significantly strengthened our approach in this area. The intelligence and clarity their platform provides enables us to move from reactive responses to proactive safeguarding, giving our team the evidence and confidence to act quickly and effectively during high-pressure moments.

Through this partnership, we are able to identify harmful behaviour early, respond quickly and proportionately, and provide the right level of support and care to those affected. Just as importantly, it enhances our ability to work collaboratively with social media platforms and relevant authorities to address abuse at source, drive accountability, and continuously improve how we protect our players and the people at the heart of our game.”