What was claimed
The Premier League is banning rainbow laces and rainbow captain’s armbands.
Our verdict
False. While the Premier League has ended its participation in the ‘Rainbow Laces’ campaign, it has confirmed it hasn’t “banned” players from wearing rainbow laces or armbands.
Posts on Facebook have claimed that the Premier League is banning the wearing of rainbow-patterned shoelaces and captain’s armbands this season.
But this isn’t correct. Although both the Premier League and Football Association (FA) have ended their partnerships with the LGBTQ+ charity Stonewall and will no longer participate in its ‘Rainbow Laces’ campaign, the rainbow symbol has not been “banned” from English football.
Some posts say: “The Premier League has announced it will ban rainbow laces and rainbow captain’s armbands for the upcoming season, saying the initiative has sparked more controversy than it has delivered positive impact”. Others feature similar wording.
Both the FA and the Premier League told Full Fact the rainbow symbol had not been banned, and the Premier League said it had not made the comment attributed to it about the initiative’s impact.
As others have pointed out, it’s possible the claims are based on the fact that the Premier League and the FA recently ended their partnerships with Stonewall, including participating in the ‘Rainbow Laces’ campaign. The annual campaign encourages participants in various sports to wear rainbow shoelaces, or laces that represent the colours of other LGBTQ+ pride and identity colours.
In August Premier League team captains agreed to wear standard Premier League armbands for every game, after some captains either declined to wear or wore altered rainbow armbands last season.
As has been reported elsewhere, both the Premier League and the FA are understood to be developing their own LGBTQ+ inclusion campaigns.
This article is part of our work fact checking potentially false pictures, videos and stories on Facebook. You can read more about this—and find out how to report Facebook content—here. For the purposes of that scheme, we’ve rated this claim as false because the Premier League and FA have confirmed they haven’t banned players from wearing rainbow shoelaces or armbands.
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