International sports media mega-company ESPN has removed a participant in its Australian Football League footy tips competition who had registered his screen name “Burnthejews” and has banned the person from reregistering.
The sport is known in Australia as AFL but to its myriad of supporters across the country it is affectionately called footy. It is to many Australians what baseball and football is to Americans, and soccer and cricket are to other sporting nations.
ESPN runs an online competition in which participants forecast results weekly.
The company acted swiftly when this user name was brought to its attention. A spokesperson for ESPN told J-Wire: “A footytips user created an account name that violated our rules. The language used is offensive and unacceptable, does not reflect our values and has no place on our site.”
Peter Wertheim, the co-CEO of The Executive Council of Australian Jewry, told J-Wire: “As a leading global sports media company, ESPN reaches audiences in virtually every country in the world…. ESPN is to be commended for taking prompt action to bar that person permanently from its platform.”
— JTA
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From the Liveblog of
Sunday, July 15, 2018
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