The Premier League has ended its eight-year partnership with Stonewall, the LGBTQ+ rights charity, and intends to launch a replacement inclusion campaign of its own, according to 90min.
The two organisations have worked together since 2017, a period that produced some of the most visible LGBTQ+ awareness activity in English top-flight football. The league now plans to introduce a new campaign during LGBTQ+ History Month, though 90min's report does not specify a precise launch date or detail what form that campaign will take.
The decision marks a notable shift in how the Premier League manages its equality and inclusion work. Running a bespoke campaign in-house rather than through a third-party charity gives the league direct control over messaging and delivery, though it also means taking on the credibility and scrutiny that came with the Stonewall name.
Stonewall has been the leading lobbying and advocacy organisation for LGBTQ+ rights in the United Kingdom for more than three decades, and its association with the Premier League lent the football partnership considerable external authority. Whether the league's independent offering can carry comparable weight will be a question that follows the campaign's launch.
LGBTQ+ inclusion remains an area of genuine sensitivity within English football. Visible out gay or bisexual male players at professional level are still exceptionally rare, and fan environment surveys have consistently pointed to concerns about homophobic language inside grounds. Those facts give the league's next move real significance, whatever the structural arrangements around it turn out to be.