How Jake Daniels defeated the haters by moving the goalposts for coverage of sexuality in football and sports

The 17-year-old Blackpool forward’s bold move resulted in the tabloids’ ‘silhouette of disgrace’ receiving the red card in an absolutely perfect performance

May 22, 2022 7:29 p.m(Updated 7:30 p.m.)

It’s time to toss the ‘silhouette of shame’ that the tabloids have long used to scare Britain’s gay footballers into coming out.

For years, this sombre illustration of an athlete living in fear of his supposedly dark secret being exposed was a clumsy image that equated the LGBTQ+ gamer with anonymous and sinister figures – a Mr. Big or a disgraced celebrity hiding behind hidden by a court order.

But Jake Daniels showed that it doesn’t have to be that way. The 17-year-old Blackpool striker, who came out as gay in a perfectly staged announcement last week, has shifted the media’s course on how sexuality in sport is going to be dealt with in the future.

“It was beautifully done,” says Rishi Madlani, co-chair of campaign group Pride in Football. “The way the story was uncovered and how it has since been reported has shown such maturity in the media by not sensationalizing it but reporting the authentic story.”

For months, Daniels worked with Sky Sports News journalist Tim Thornton to ensure the story was well received. The player’s agent and family, LGBTQ+ charity Stonewall and SSN director Mark Alford were all closely involved.

From what I understand, the teenager was encouraged to practice his interview answers and review them so he was happy with the finished content.

Daniels had a say in which segments were clipped for social media and whether his comments were shared with other news outlets.

Sky even alerted social platforms to ensure hateful comments didn’t cloud the player’s sincere message of hope.

The transformation of English football into a multi-billion dollar industry has brought good and bad.

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No company has played as big a role in commercialization as Sky. But the broadcaster has recently championed football’s inclusivity with its bold anti-racism stance and support of Stonewall’s Rainbow Laces campaign to combat homophobia in football.

It wasn’t long ago that two Sky Sports presenters, Andy Gray and Richard Keys, were symbols of a football culture rooted in machismo and intolerance.

Keys was caught off-camera speaking about a woman and asking a studio expert, “Did you smash it?” Gray was filmed asking a host to put a mic down his pants. Keys and Gray left Sky in 2011 and it is now owned by another company, Comcast.

However, some outdated attitudes and practices remain in UK sports media. The “gay footballer silhouette” resurfaced just a week ago when The Sun forestalled the Daniels revelation with a story headlined “Breaking Stigma” and outlined a mystery player with a ball under his arm.

The play was sympathetic, but another Sun article last October entitled “Ace’s Anguish” included a shadowy image and told of a gay Premier League player who was undergoing therapy over fears about his coming out to be “crucified”.

When The Sun published a series of similarly illustrated stories in 2020, including: “Gay Prem Star: I’m Fear to Coming Out,” 200 individuals and 100 organizations connected to LGBTQ+ in football signed an open letter in which they “Sensational Accounts” complained about the possible repercussions of these stories.

The “shadowy silhouette” has become a “standard narrative,” says Jon Holmes, football journalist and founder of Sports Media LGBT+.

“It was a big problem, the tabloids’ way of writing stories about players they don’t name, which focuses on fear and anguish. It creates a guessing game that breeds a culture of fear, and until Jake told his story, it was the only depiction of what being gay might be like in men’s football.”

It’s so unnecessary, suggests Ellis Cashmore, a sociology professor at Aston University who studied attitudes among football fans in 2010 and found that 93 percent welcomed gay players.

A recent follow-up put the number at 95 percent. The idea of ​​football fans fuming with homophobia is “a chimera, a myth” that the “media has uncritically given credence to,” he says.

He also accuses football agents of warning players not to come out if it harms their brand endorsements.

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Brands and advertising agencies that have waited until the 2020s to open up to the wider LGBTQ+ community have their share to play in making Daniels the first openly gay male footballer to play professionally in the UK since the late Justin Fashanu.

The positive reaction to Daniels’ message confirms Cashmore’s findings. We’ll see what happens when he steps onto the pitch next season.

A few patio dinosaurs might howl their disapproval as well as boo the knee. Let’s not reinforce their prejudices by sensationalizing them.