Melbourne Victory highlights its commitment to diversity, inclusion and a welcoming environment for all through its involvement in several events linked to this season’s Pride Cup.
For the fourth consecutive year, Melbourne Victory and Adelaide United will play off for the annual Pride Cup in both the A-League Women’s and A-League Men’s matches to be hosted at Coopers Stadium on Saturday, January 17.
Since both teams first started the Pride Cup fixture in the 2022/23 A-Leagues season, Victory’s Women’s and Men’s teams have each won the trophy twice.
While coming home with three points is the priority for each match, in line with our vision to lead, unite, connect and inspire people through football, the Club is steadfast in its desire to ensure that every Melbourne Victory supporter feels connected, supported, and heard at our matches. Our commitment to this is outlined in the Club’s recently announced Fan Engagement Plan.
The Club is committed to ensuring that all our fans and members feel genuinely valued throughout their journey with Melbourne Victory, and we know in doing that, that our Club is and will be more than a football Club. Melbourne Victory is a community and a place where all supporters can feel a sense of belonging, pride, and a shared purpose.
Speaking about the Pride Cup, and the way in which the Club will activate and engage the Pride community this year, Managing Director, Caroline Carnegie, said:
“While the Club has worked hard to balance how we can ensure the Pride community do indeed feel connected, supported, and heard, but also welcome and safe at our matches, we understand to produce change and to live up to our commitment to every fan and member in our Fan Engagement Plan, it is important that we focus on what role we can play in driving long term outcomes, and education that will precipitate change.
“This means we need to couch our messaging and engage the broader community in a way that they will hear us and learn from.
“We acknowledge that despite all the right intentions over the last three years, varied approaches to Pride Cup activations have had some success, but others at times have missed the mark for both the Pride community and the broader Melbourne Victory community.
“While we are still learning how to ensure we can create a welcoming and supportive environment for all, this is part of our broader objective at all match days, and not unique to the Pride community.
“That said, this season we engaged extensively with Pride Cup, our own Diversity & Inclusion Working Group, and our broader member and fan base through a series of workshops and other activities, commencing in the pre-season, in a bid to determine the most effective way for the Club to implement and drive positive change and grow football across all communities.
“Following that consultation, this year, we are focusing on the themes of education and community engagement, harnessing Victory’s existing network, including partner organisations, to properly engage the LGBTIQ+ community in a way that will resonate most.”
This will begin at AAMI Park, where the Club’s A-League Men’s and Women’s players will participate in Pride Cup education sessions led by Hannah Wilkinson, strengthening the understanding of Pride Cup’s work through the lived experiences of former professional footballers.
Then, on the evening of Friday, January 16, Victory will be leading an inaugural Futsal event at the Queer Sporting Alliance’s National Sports Tournament at Narandjeri Stadium (Darebin International Sports Centre). This Tournament is the nation’s biggest annual sports event for the LGBTIQ+ community.
Two days later, Victory will share a stall at the Midsumma Carnival (Alexandra Gardens in the City) with Melbourne Rovers Soccer Club, a community club that fosters a safe environment for the Pride community. The event will feature activations that promote football’s ongoing commitment to inclusion.
These Victorian-based events will be bolstered by a series of activations accompanying the Men’s and Women’s A-League double header away to Adelaide United, which will include, on match day –1, Melbourne Victory staff and players attending a panel discussion exploring Pride in Football across Australia and New Zealand, featuring a gallery of key LGBTIQ+ moments in football.
As part of the Pride Cup on Saturday, our A-League Captains will sport pride armbands for the matches.
As announced last week, Melbourne Victory is pleased to be working with Areto Labs to enable the Club to foster safe online environments, by taking the opportunity to implement and pilot world-first ethical moderation technology. The pilot aims to provide a safe, supportive online environment for teams and athletes, reducing harassment and abuse while promoting positive fan engagement, and enabling teams to promote their matches and content with comments, but without the need for increasing social media moderation resources.
The Club commits to reviewing this sequence of Pride Cup activations and encourages feedback from members and fans, with avenues for dialogue available in the ‘How We Listen’ section of the Fan Engagement Plan.
