Abstract
Scandals have been characterized as catalysts of contentious actions of fringe stakeholders against powerful organizations, which might even transform a political opportunity structure. Such claims ignore, however, that the abundance of scandals, media logic, and crisis management routines strongly favors individual “scapegoating”, limiting the impact of scandals. Hence, marginalized actors aiming to exploit scandals might need strong political allies and should not refrain from contentious actions. We provide support for our arguments by investigating the “kissing scandal” surrounding the Spanish women's national football team. The scandal was sparked by an unsolicited kiss by the president of the Spanish Football Association, Luis Rubiales, to the team's striker, Jennifer Hermoso, immediately after the team won the 2023 FIFA Women's World Cup in Australia. Although the scandal made headlines around the world, it only left a limited impact on Spanish football governance due to a highly favorable political opportunity structure and the willingness of women's activists to engage in further contentious action. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.
After a long history of discrimination, women made considerable progress regarding participation in sports. By now, world football's governing body (Fédération Internationale de Football Association—FIFA) has even committed itself to promoting gender equality (FIFA, 2023: 11–12). Yet, female athletes have recently become more vocal in their resistance against remaining gender discrimination in sports (e.g. Steidinger, 2020).
This paper aims to study the success of such activism by examining the so-called “kissing scandal” in Spanish women's football. After the Spanish women's national team won the 2023 FIFA Women 's World Cup, the president of the Spanish Football Association (Real Federación Española de Fútbol—hereinafter RFEF), Luis Rubiales, unsolicitedly kissed the team's striker, Jennifer Hermoso, during the trophy handing ceremony. Before, Rubiales had made other questionable gestures such as grabbing his genitals in the VIP box at full time. Rubiales' misconduct made global headlines and stirred a public outcry against gender discrimination in Spanish football.
Here, we assess the extent to which the scandal provided an opportunity to mitigate gender discrimination in the sport. We base our analysis on the integrative framework developed by Daudigeos et al. (2020), who claimed that public scandals can empower formerly marginalized stakeholders. In contrast, we argue that the specific dynamics of scandalization allow football governing bodies to limit a scandal's impact. It takes strong allies and willingness to engage in contentious actions to exploit the transformative potential of a scandal.
Scandals as catalyzing events for marginalized stakeholders
Private organizations are increasingly involved in contentious politics (de Bakker and den Hond, 2008; King and Pearce, 2010). In particular, scandals can make organizations vulnerable to claims of hostile stakeholders, which inspired Daudigeos et al. (2020) to conceptualize the catalyzing impact of scandals for marginalized (“fringe”) stakeholders more systematically. This integrative framework combines insights of political movement research, scandal theory, and organizational politics. Yet, as this framework focuses foremost on the so-called fringe stakeholders, it is first necessary to discuss the status of female footballers as marginalized stakeholders before examining the framework in depth.
Women as marginalized stakeholders in sport
Daudigeos et al.'s (2020) framework focuses on “fringe” stakeholders, which are characterized as groups posing no immediate danger to the operation and survival of an organization and lacking power and legitimacy (see also de Bakker and den Hond, 2008). Although girls and women represent still marginalized stakeholders in sport as a social institution, which has reinforced male dominance (Clargo and Skey, 2024), the definition does not fully capture their status. Thanks to the persistent efforts of women's football activists, this sport has now taken root worldwide. Yet, long-lasting gender discrimination has significantly impacted women's involvement in football and left an enduring legacy. Women's football has been often reduced to the status of an amateur activity, which strongly limited the potential to reach any kind of equality (Meier, 2020). Gender discrimination has also resulted in limited media exposure. Moreover, women in sport continue to be banalized (Daddario, 2021). Thus, women's football faces lower consumer demand, ongoing disparities in funding and support as well as persistent resources dependencies on men's football (Murray et al., 2022). Women are also underrepresented in the upper strata of football management and governance, which is pivotal for resource allocation, staff recruitment, rule enforcement, and crisis management (Knoppers, 2022). Such male-dominated environments are more likely to perpetuate androcentric practices (Piggott, 2022), which can involve the trivialization of harassment complaints.
In light of the “Me Too” movement, further evidence was documented on the prevalence of unwanted sexual acts and other forms of abuse in sport. As outlined in an Australian study, female athletes were significantly more likely to experience sexual harassment and abuse from peer athletes and coaches than their male counterparts (Pankowiak et al., 2023). Such findings have been mirrored in Europe (Ohlert et al., 2021) and North America (Haynes, 2023), which has inspired efforts to mitigate such practices at the international (Alsalem, 2024) as well as national levels (Thorpe and Forsdike, 2025). Quite clearly, the case of Luis Rubiales was not the first scandal involving female athletes, although it was perhaps one of the scandals with the highest public profile in this context in the last few years.
To summarize: although there is no doubt that progress has been made to combat gender inequity throughout the structures, norms, and culture of sport (Clargo and Skey, 2024), female footballers still represent marginalized stakeholders within the game, and discrimination and harassment is present as in many other sporting contexts.
Understanding the political opportunity structure for women's football activists
Although Daudigeos et al. (2020) emphasize the empowering potential of scandals, they reject a “superagentic vision” but emphasize that contentious actions always occur under structural conditions and within a specific political context. Therefore, they resort to the concept of political opportunity structure (POS) as a key construct within social movement research (Benford and Snow, 2000; Meyer, 2004). Tarrow (1994: 85) defined the POS as “the dimensions of the political environment that provide incentives for people to undertake collective action by affecting their expectations for success or failure.” The rather generic definition seems often to be applied in an ad hoc manner, which combines more tangible institutional features and the presence of elite allies with informal, cultural, or ideological factors (e.g. Mena and Waeger, 2014; Snow and Benford, 1988). Yet, more problematic than the lack of conceptual consensus is that there is no agreement on how the POS exactly affects social movements (Meyer, 2004).
The specific conceptualization of the POS presented by Daudigeos et al. (2020) is rooted in an open system perspective according to which (1) formal organizations represent collectives of groups and individuals that pursue varied and independent goals and interests, and (2) organizations are political entities interacting with an equally political environment (Weber and Waeger, 2017). Daudigeos et al. (2020) claim that the POS for marginalized stakeholders depends on (1) the openness of an organization, (2) the presence of allies, (3) an organization's repression capability, (4) an organization's capacity to enforce and monitor outcomes, and (5) “ideology,” which refers to the congruence, also called “cultural resonance” (Snow and Benford, 1988), between the framing employed by a social movement or activists on the one hand, and social values and principles on the other hand.
These ideas are quite useful for conceptualizing the POS for women's football activists. At first glance, football governing bodies seem to lack openness and transparency as they have enjoyed far-reaching self-regulatory powers within a pyramidal governance structure (Geeraert et al., 2013). However, football governing bodies have been made increasingly subject to good governance standards (Meier and García, 2021). Moreover, football governing bodies are also mission-driven organizations representing a broad grassroots movement. Accordingly, they portray their sport and themselves as a vehicle for social integration. The commitment to universalistic values and nondiscrimination has provided women's football activists with the essential “cultural resonance” for their claims. Hence, women gained access to football by employing a liberal-feminist discourse centering on equal opportunities (Scraton et al., 1999: 99).
Scandals as catalysts of contentious actions
Scandals are a common phenomenon in sport and come with disruptive potential (Rowe, 2019; Wilson et al., 2010). The key claim of Daudigeos et al. (2020) is that scandals can reduce obstacles to contentious action by marginalized stakeholders. Following Adut (2008: 11), they define a scandal as an event of varying duration that starts with the publicization of a transgression and lasts as long as there is significant and sustained public interest in it. The catalyzing or empowering effects of a scandal relate to three key social mechanisms.
Scale shift, which represents “a change in the number and level of contentious actions leading to broader contention involving a wider range of actors and bridging their claims and identities” (McAdam et al., 2001: 331). For example, revelations about child labor practices in the global supply chains of the sporting goods industry served to inspire the emergence of a broad coalition of interest groups, which were, for different reasons, interested in imposing Western labor practices on developing countries (Khan et al., 2007).
Publicization of deviant behaviors: Central to any scandal is the publicization or exposure of deviant behaviors, which reduces the ability of targeted organizations to repress marginalized stakeholders and evade accountability (Daudigeos et al., 2020). For a situation to be considered a scandal rather than a routine crisis or simple negative publicity, it must involve behavior that is more serious than an on-field transgression and is often seen as illegal or immoral (Chien et al., 2016). This can lead to homilist responses from the public, which can result in an amplification of the scandal and reputational and financial damage (Baker and Rowe, 2013; Lewis and Hirt, 2019; Rowe, 2019; Solberg et al., 2010). In other terms, amplification of an issue through publicity was central for ending the concealment of sexual abuse in sport organizations (Hartill, 2013). For example, it was only after investigative media reports that the breadth of sexual abuse in US gymnastics became evident, and criminal proceedings were initiated.
Organizational contagion refers to processes of social distancing as actors become anxious that they will be “contaminated” by a scandal (Greve et al., 2010). Such contagion reduces an organization's capacity for repressing critics (Daudigeos et al., 2020). Thus, an animal cruelty scandal occurring during the modern pentathlon's equestrian event in the Tokyo Olympics inspired the International Olympic Committee to distance itself from the Union Internationale de Pentathlon Moderne, which ultimately inspired the latter to comply with the demands of animal rights activists and to abandon equestrianism (Meier et al., 2023).
The framework does not claim that scandals are the only means by which marginal stakeholders can contest powerful organizations. And this is true in sport as well. Female athletes have become increasingly vocal in their resistance against persistent gender discrimination in sports (e.g. Cooky and Antunovic, 2020; Crawford, 2023; Hill et al., 2023; Steidinger, 2020) without necessarily linking their advocacy to scandals, but simply to human or athlete rights. Nevertheless, the framework suggests that, if the three key social mechanisms (i.e. scale shift, publicization of deviant behaviors, and organizational contagion) align correctly, scandals might create POS for the marginalized stakeholder(s) that come with transformative potential.
Yet, the approach downplays the fact that scandals represent ubiquitous mediated, socially constructed and contested phenomena. Scandalization belongs to the standard selection and production routines of media and has gained in importance in an era in which journalism faces budget cuts resulting in de-professionalization (Konieczna, 2018). Since political entrepreneurs have always capitalized on the media's appetite for scandals in order to mobilize public support (Goode and Ben-Yehuda, 1994), scandals are often not only deliberately constructed but also abundant. Therefore, minority/marginalized stakeholders trying to exploit scandals to affect change must work hard to maintain public attention as they compete for decreasing attention spans of increasingly fragmented audiences (Johansson and Vigsø, 2020).
The character of scandals as mediated events implies that coverage of scandals must fit into “media logic” (Altheide, 2013). One of the most fundamental elements of media logic is personalization, which simplifies complex topics and caters to the audience's expectations concerning drama, confrontation, and entertainment. Hence, media coverage of politics has been increasingly focused on leaders rather than on organizations or social structures (Van Aelst et al., 2012). Personalization implies that the outrage following a scandal is often targeted at individual actors. Personalization can make organizational leadership accountable (Daudigeos et al., 2020: 400–401) but also create barriers for addressing more fundamental/structural sources of misconduct as the organization might be freed from responsibility (An and Gower, 2009). In order to avoid personalization, marginalized stakeholders have to present a compelling and effective framing targeting more fundamental/structural grievances (de Bakker and den Hond, 2008). Framing represents a form of strategic interaction (Benford and Snow, 2000). Hence, marginalized stakeholders and targeted organizations will engage in an “informational competition” (Baron, 2003), as organizations have developed standard strategies to contain the impact of scandals (Coombs and Holladay, 2022) to counteract the rise of any of the three social mechanisms that feed scandals. One of these standard strategies is “scapegoating,” which personalizes responsibility to protect the organization's reputation and to avoid more fundamental organizational changes (Ma and Zhan, 2016). The strategy of scapegoating, in other words, focuses on containing scandals to specific individuals’ behavior, rather than to structural reasons.
Summary
Women represent marginalized stakeholders within football with limited influence on decision-making processes, as men dominate football organizations and control much of football's resources. Yet, as partly mission-driven organizations, football governance bodies must cater to societal demands such as gender equality, which creates opportunities for demands of greater gender equality in sport and better treatment of women's football. On the other hand, scandals might create opportunities for contentious politics that can be used by marginalized stakeholders to demand and affect change; in our case, women's footballers. Thus, this combination can create, under specific circumstances, a POS for advocates of greater gender equality in football. However, in cases where scandals provide such an opportunity (such as Luis Rubiales’ behavior), women's football activists have to mitigate short public attention spans and the scapegoating tactics of incumbent powerholders trying to mitigate disruptive effects and calls for structural change. Therefore, we address the following research question:
RQ: To what extent did women's football activists succeed to use the “kissing scandal” for targeting more fundamental issues regarding gender discrimination in Spanish football?
Research design
Our study follows a research design that combines process tracing with detailed thematic analyses of media coverage of the Rubiales scandal. This research design aims to construct narratives of structures and events by employing analytical concepts (Rowlinson et al., 2014) drawn from the framework discussed above. Thus, our primary research method is qualitative thematic analysis of news articles covering the “kissing scandal” published by five Spanish media. We outline our sampling and analysis strategy.
Sampling
We selected five Spanish media: El País, El Mundo, El Mundo Deportivo, Agencia EFE, and Relevo. Our choice of media outlets reflects four rationales to ensure that the complexity of the public discourse is captured (Van Dijk, 1995): (1) ideological diversity, (2) media type variance, (3) popularity, and (4) accessibility. Accordingly, El País and El Mundo represent two of the most influential national broadsheet newspapers in Spain with distinct political orientations. Regarding media types, sports news dailies and websites figure prominently in the Spanish media landscape. The sports-focused Marca is the most read newspaper in Spain, but it was not accessible. Therefore, we had to resort to its competitor El Mundo Deportivo, which provided the added advantage of being a Barcelona-based news outlet. Relevo, a relatively newer digital sports news website, was included to account for the shift in media consumption to digital formats. Agencia EFE, Spain's primary news agency, was selected for its reputation for factual reporting. Finally, the selection reflects pragmatic consideration in terms of accessibility. The outlets were either included in the prestigious LexisNexis database or had an open, searchable website.
For the selected media outlets, we used the keywords “Hermoso” AND “Rubiales” to sample relevant articles. Our search covered the period between August 1st and December 31st, 2023. Thus, we captured the preparation of the Spanish team before the start of the FIFA Women's World Cup and the decisions of FIFA and the Spanish administrative sports tribunal to ban Luis Rubiales from all football activities. In total, we identified 1662 articles. Assuming that longer articles are likely to conclude more claims, we focused on coding on the top 10% of articles in terms of word length and analyzed 167 articles in detail (Table 1).
Selected media and article sample overview.
Source: Author's own elaboration with data from Estudio General de Medios (AIMC, 2025) and GFK DAM (Dircomfidencial, 2024; Relevo, 2025), the most reputed audience measurement agencies in Spain.
Figures refer to the number of articles identified by the keyword-based search.
Figures refer to the number of words.
There are no readership data for EFE as it is a news agency.
Relevo is an online media, hence no data on print readers.
Coding
Our coding starts from the assumption that marginalized stakeholders have to present compelling claims to create sufficient public support, as explained in our literature review above. Therefore, we conducted an analysis of the political claims included in the articles employing the framework developed by Haunss and Kohlmorgen (2008). This framework is particularly suited to study the discursive struggles between competing stakeholder coalitions for public support. The framework aims to explain the mobilization of public support by focusing on the coherence of public claims and the size and stability of actor coalitions advocating them (Haunss and Kohlmorgen, 2008; Leifeld and Haunss, 2012). In a nutshell, the framework focuses on identifying which claims are made, who makes those claims, who is the target of the claim, and who supports the claimant(s).
Therefore, following the framework, we first defined a claim as a strategic action in the public sphere. Since claims can be differently framed, we decomposed claims into several subcomponents or elements for coding. These elements are: claimant (who makes the claim), target (toward who is the claim made), grievances (what is the problem that the claimant(s) want to address), and demands—what do the claimant(s) want to happen to solve their claims—(see the online Appendix for more details on the subcomponents of the claims and the coding protocol).
Based on these instructions, we fine-coded the respective news items by identifying the individual claims. This fine-coding was primarily conducted by one author, who is a native Spanish speaker. To ensure the quality and reliability of the coding, initially 30% of the items were also coded, compared, and discussed by a second member of the research team. This was reduced to 15% after the first 30 news articles, as the research team was satisfied with the consistency of the first coder. Coding was also cross-checked by the entire research team, which regularly met to discuss coding decisions and refine, if necessary, the codebook. In total, we identified 871 unique claims over the 167 news articles analyzed. Since some claims were shared by several claimants and aimed at different targets, the total dataset consists of 1204 observations.
Methods of analysis
We combine qualitative content analysis with quantitative data visualization. Hence, we treated claims as analytical unit and constructed a bipartite network with claimants as one type of node, and targets, grievances, and demands as a second type of node (Grandjean, 2015). Thus, we could depict key patterns of the scandal's discourse. For visualizing the relationships between claimants, targets, grievances, and demands, we performed descriptive analyses for the top 10 claimants using Sankey diagrams.
Results: context, short- and long-term trajectory of the “kissing scandal”
Before delving into the presentation and discussion of our results on the claims made in Spanish media following Luis Rubiales’ actions, it is necessary to consider important aspects of the broader context of both Spanish football and Spanish politics that will facilitate our analysis and discussions; this shall also help the reader to contextualize the social processes we are analyzing. We touch on two important elements: the persistent neglect of women's football by RFEF, and the political environment that facilitated a POS for the aggrieved footballers.
Broader context: persistent neglect of women's football
The 2023 “kissing scandal” was preceded by long arguments about the RFEF's mistreatment of female players that date as far back as the 2015 FIFA Women's World Cup. A disappointing performance at that tournament in Canada prompted players to voice grievances against head coach Ignacio Quereda (accusations included mistreatment and greatly misogynistic comments by the coach to the players); Quereda was finally replaced by Jorge Vilda in 2015 (Marca, 2021). Yet, debates about underinvestment in women's football continued. In September 2022, 15 players sent emails to RFEF declaring themselves unavailable for national team selection, citing concerns over well-being and calling for significant changes in RFEF structures and national team management. The RFEF publicly criticized the players as “spoiled girls” and excluded them from national team activities (Marsden, 2022). That started a media and public opinion war that RFEF expertly managed in its favor. As a result, most information about the women's national team from that moment in September 2022 was constantly framed and discussed in the media as a “the spoiled 15 players” versus RFEF and Luis Rubiales battle (Marsden, 2022). Crucially, in that framing war the national team coach, Jorge Vilda, clearly sided with his employer, the RFEF. Everything that happened after Luis Rubiales sexually harassed Jenni Hermoso during the trophy ceremony must be analyzed from this starting point of confrontation between the players and the RFEF, that also involved public opinion. Thus, after the Spanish women's national team qualified for the 2023 World Cup, Spanish public opinion remained strongly divided reflecting broader societal debates (Peterson, 2023), which we go on to discuss below.
POS: issue salience, legal reform, and hosting application
The POS in which the Rubiales scandal occurred was defined by societal debates on gender relations, feminism, and women's rights, which have turned into one of the political cleavages in Spain (Perales García et al., 2025). These debates became particularly salient after a left-of-center coalition government formed by the socialist party (Partida Socialista Obrero Espanol - PSOE) and the far-left party Podemos assumed power in 2018, which was accompanied by the steady rise of the far-right party Vox. Gender equality was a central programmatic issue for the coalition government in which Podemos controlled the equality portfolio (Perales García et al., 2025). As a result, women's rights and gender equality were almost permanently present in media and parliamentary debates (Cabezas, 2021).
Moreover, the Spanish Parliament adopted in December 2022 a reform of sport's legal framework. In accordance with the government's broader agenda, the 2022 sports act requires (Art. 47.3) governing bodies to have at least 40% female executive board members. Crucially, this provision could only be legally binding on Spanish sport federations once the Consejo Superior de Deportes (CSD) 1 adopted a ministerial order (Hidalgo, 2023). While the necessary ministerial order came into force only in January 2024 (CSD, 2024), the legislative amendment toward increased gender equality in Spanish sports created a momentum favoring women's football activists. The timing of these elements is noticeably, as the national sports act was adopted by parliament in December 2023, just months before the whole Rubiales scandal.
Finally, it is also important to realize that at the time of the scandal, FIFA was due to award the hosting rights for the 2030 Men's World Cup nurturing fears that the “kissing scandal” could damage the Spanish bid.
The starting point of the scandal: moments after the 2023 World Cup final
As the Women's World Cup started and the team progressed, Spanish media and social networks discussed the results on a constant RFEF versus the players basis reflecting deeper political cleavages (Lowe, 2025). Ultimately, Spain won the World Cup final on August 20th, 2023 by defeating England 1–0 (Peterson, 2023). In the ensuing trophy handing ceremony, RFEF president Luis Rubiales kissed striker Jenni Hermoso on the lips, among other unsavory gestures that included grabbing his genitals in the VIP box (García, 2024; Tronchoni, 2023). Rubiales’ actions immediately provoked criticism, creating a scandal that ended his career as a football administrator (García, 2024; Moñino, 2023b). Table 2 summarizes the events that unfolded from the final, to the formal decisions by both FIFA and the Spanish Administrative Sports Tribunal to ban Luis Rubiales from all football activities (December 2023).
Summarized timeline of the scandal.
RFEF: Real Federación Española de Fútbol; FIFA: Fédération Internationale de Football Association; TAD: national sports tribunal; CSD: Consejo Superior de Deportes.
Note: Events are grouped in stages divided by key milestones that marked the development of the scandal.
Source: Authors’ own depiction with data from the media articles.
Between the final and the Rubiales’ ban, there were several important milestones, most of them concentrated in a short period of 6 weeks (until early October 2023). These included, in the chronological order: a video of apology by Luis Rubiales, the express support of the Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez toward the players, defiant stance by Luis Rubiales in an extraordinary annual general meeting of the RFEF, a firm commitment not to play for Spain anymore while Rubiales was in power led by star player Alexia Putellas, the resignation of Luis Rubiales due to media, political, and social pressure, a players’ revolt during their training camp in Oliva (Valencia) that required the intervention of the government, the commitment of RFEF post-Rubiales leadership to undergo changes, the sacking of four senior RFEF leaders (including General Secretary, Andreu Camps), and the formal ban of Luis Rubiales by FIFA as mentioned above. In the following subsections, we elaborate on the most relevant elements of this chain of events using our analytical framework that unpacks how the scandal was portrayed in the media through the analysis of claims.
As can be seen in Figure 1 media interest escalated shortly after the kissing incident and peaked on 2 days surrounding Rubiales’ defiant address at the RFEF's general assembly (August 23, 2023). Although media interest rapidly declined, it never fully disappeared, and there were punctual moments during September 2023 coinciding with Rubiales resignations and the players’ Oliva revolt where press coverage picked up (Figure 1).
Distribution of articles August to December 2023. Note: Number of articles retrieved as described in the Methodology section. Authors’ own depiction. Numbers refer to scandal periods displayed in Table 2.
RFEF and Rubiales’ immediate reaction: manipulative crisis management
Luis Rubiales and the incumbent RFEF sensed immediately that the incident could turn into a full-blown scandal. Thus, RFEF released just hours after the final a statement in which Hermoso was quoted saying the incident was not important. The player later claimed that she was forced to agree to that statement by RFEF's media department. RFEF also released on August 21st a video recorded by Luis Rubiales during the team's stopover at Doha Airport, which pretended to be some kind of “apology” (Bonals, 2025).
On August 22nd, as the team arrived in Spain, Spanish prime minister Pedro Sánchez deemed the apology as being “insufficient” and claimed that the unsolicited kiss represented an “unacceptable gesture” (Luisoni, 2023). Several football stakeholders demanded Rubiales’ resignation. In a new statement, Hermoso called for “exemplary measures” against the president (Tronchoni, 2023). FIFA opened disciplinary proceedings against Rubiales on August 24, but he vehemently refused to resign at a RFEF's general assembly meeting scheduled on August 25th, claiming that “false feminism” had inspired a witch hunt (Moñino, 2023a).
Rubiales’ aggressive refusal to resign only increased animosity. In a statement on that same day (August 25) Jenni Hermoso said the unwanted kiss had left her feeling “vulnerable and like the victim of an assault,” describing it as “an impulsive, macho act, out of place and with no type of consent on my part” (EFE, 2023a). Hermoso and 80 other Spain players, including the entire World Cup squad, announced that they would not play for the national team until the RFEF's leadership changed. Finally, a tweet by double Ballon d’Or winner Spanish football star Alexia Putellas marked the beginning of an open confrontation. Putellas tweeted: “Esto es inaceptable. Se acabó. Contigo compañera @jennihermoso” [This is unacceptable. It's over. I got your back, my friend @jennihermoso]. The hashtag #SeAcabo (it is over) became the slogan of the players and their supporters (Pérez, 2023).
Framing in the early stages of the scandal through personalization and contagion: increasing isolation of Luis Rubiales
Supporting our ideas on personalization, Rubiales was the key figure of the media's coverage of the scandal (Figure 2). The prominence of media as claimants indicates the scandal's character as mediated event. Nevertheless, the scandal empowered also women's football activists. The fact that stakeholders and officials who did not belong to the incumbent RFEF leadership also occupied ranks among the top 10 claimants might indicate either social distancing or that the scandal created an opportunity for internal critics to contest Rubiales (Figure 2; Table 3).
A bipartite network depiction of the “kissing scandal.” Note. Graph created using Gephi (Grandjean, 2015). White circles indicate claimants (cl), black circles targets (tg), blue circles grievances, and red circles demands.
Top 10 codes in claim categories.
RFEF: Real Federación Española de Fútbol; CSD: Consejo Superior de Deportes.
Strong personalization is revealed by the fact that Rubiales was targeted in almost half of the claims: If she was the champion, he didn’t care. What mattered was being on camera. The gesture, far from being uncontrollable, was imposing, intentional, and degrading—like all gestures that invade another's intimate space, typical only of someone who, deep down, just wants to get a piece. (El País, 2023)
2
As the National Team and World Champions, we do not deserve such a manipulative, hostile, and controlling culture. This type of incident adds to a long list of situations that we, the players, have been denouncing in recent years. (EFE, 2023a) The stolen kiss to Jenni Hermoso follows the genital language in the VIP box from someone who feels untouchable, powerful, and lets down their guard to reveal their inner self. He gestures, kisses, or insults—behavior typical of narcissistic pathology, which leads those who suffer from it to confuse the codes of personal relationships, reject any criticism, intimidate, and detach from reality. (El Mundo, 2023) Government coalition partners declared: “we continue to call for Rubiales’ resignation, as he has humiliated and assaulted a woman. His excuses are absolutely worthless.” (Relevo, 2023a)
Most prominent claimants, targets, grievances, and demands. Note: Diagram created by using the Stata Sankey package developed by Naqvi (2024).
Associations between claimants, targets, grievances, and demands.
Note: Associations between variables as measured by Cramer's V; ***p < 0.001.
Hence, the dynamics of the mediated scandal turned the removal of Rubiales and other personalized sanctions into the most likely outcome (Figure 3). A turning point of events was FIFA's decision to provisionally suspend Rubiales from all football activities on August 26th, preventing him from acting as RFEF president (FIFA, 2023). At that point, regional football presidents asked him to resign (Fernández, 2023), while the public prosecutor started investigating the case as a potential sexual assault (Relevo, 2023b). Spain's national sports tribunal (TAD) also opened a case against Rubiales. Beyond Spain, the president of the Union of European Football Associations (UEFA) condemned Rubiales on August 30th. On September 4th, Spain men's national team followed suit (EFE, 2023b). The following day, stand-in RFEF president Pedro Rocha, formerly a close ally of Rubiales, apologized for Rubiales’ behavior and sacked the women's national team manager, Jorge Vilda (Ramírez and Riquelme, 2023). After legal proceedings against Rubiales gained momentum, he resigned on September 10th (BBC, 2023). Rubiales was finally found guilty of sexual harassment by the Spanish Audiencia Nacional in 2025. 3
After Rubiales resignation: exploiting organizational vulnerability by confrontative action
Although the analysis of the claims indicates the scandal was framed mostly as a case of Luis Rubiales’ individual responsibility, its impact did not end with his resignation. This is mostly because the female footballers employed confrontational tactics, as our analysis demonstrates. On September 15th (5 days after Rubiales’ resignation), 40 top female football players issued a strong statement announcing that they would not play for the national team unless “profound changes” within RFEF were made (EFE, 2023c). After this de facto strike, RFEF implicitly threatened some of these players with administrative sanctions (Villarrubia, 2023), creating a tense situation that required Spanish sports minister, Victor Francos, to travel to the national team's training camp organized in Oliva, Valencia, on September 19–20 to broker an agreement between the players and RFEF (EFE, 2023d). The players demanded the sacking of several RFEF senior officials and organizational changes in the management of women's football. The players insisted on systemic changes also in the areas of integrity and senior leadership and demanded monitoring of implementation (Torrente and Matilla, 2023). RFEF committed to “re-organization” but ultimately only sacked some high-ranking key officials (including General Secretary, Andreu Camps) and avoided any immediate meaningful reform (Fonseca, 2025).
The longer-term game: changes in RFEF governance
Rubiales’ resignation was followed by a transition period and the election of Pedro Rocha to RFEF presidency on April 26th, 2024 (RFEF, 2024a). Rocha appointed a new RFEF board, which consisted of 40% women (RFEF, 2024b). RFEF claimed that “equality policies have been fundamental in this new stage of the RFEF,” and that “a further step is being taken in this area to achieve real equality in football” (RFEF, 2024b, our emphasis). Yet, the decision reflected merely the legislative requirements of the Spanish National Sports Act of 2022 (García, 2024)—as discussed above. The Rubiales scandal, though, served to accelerate the adoption of the necessary ministerial order by the CSD (Hidalgo, 2023), which came into force in January 2024 (CSD, 2024).
Just a few months after, on December 16th, 2024, the RFEF hold elections again, and elected Rafael Louzán as president (RFEF, 2024c). Louzán appointed an executive board composed of 16 men and 15 women, exceeding the 40% gender quota. He incorporated to the executive board the president of the women's football professional league, and representatives of women's footballers trade union, and women's referees’ association (Fuentes, 2024). Moreover, RFEF appointed Reyes Bellver, a well-respected figure in Spanish women's football, to lead its women's football department. Other reforms pursuing equality, bullying, and harassment protocols, seem to have been patchy so far (Fonseca, 2025).
Discussion
While Daudigeos et al. (2020) have claimed that scandals can have an empowering effect on fringe stakeholders, we have struck a rather skeptical note. Short attention spans, media news routines, and scapegoating strategies strongly favor the personalization of scandal coverage, which limits the opportunity to target more fundamental grievances.
Our case study on the “kissing scandal” following the victory of the Spanish women's national team in the 2023 World Cup provides some support to these ideas. Media coverage of the scandal was strongly personalized making sanctions against Rubiales the most likely outcome. The fact that the scandal yielded slightly more systemic outcomes might therefore question our ideas. Yet, it is important to carefully reflect the specific features of this scandal:
The scandal occurred in a highly polarized political environment. The scandal resonated with the left-leaning government's agenda to promote gender equity. As the scandal allowed the government to distinguish itself as a progressive force, it served as reliable ally of women's football activists. Rubiales and the RFEF handled the scandal extremely badly. Manipulative and aggressive tactics made the organization even more vulnerable to contentious politics. Finally, the female footballers did not hesitate to exploit the organization's vulnerability by resorting to more confrontative tactics, that is, a de facto strike, which proves that they are marginalized but not completely powerless stakeholders.
In sum, the scandal served as a catalyst for contentious actions by female footballers because it visibly supported previous grievances about mistreatment and poor management of the women's national team. Moreover, the scandal catalyzed the formation of a broader coalition, which targeted gender inequalities in Spanish football. The poor management of the scandal further changed the POS significantly in favor of the female footballers. The manipulative attempts to downplay the harassment delegitimized RFEF and made it impossible for the organization to employ the repressive tactics it had used before the 2023 World Cup. The loss of repressive capacity implied that RFEF was not only unable to punish the striking players but also failed to obstruct reform demands.
However, scandalization alone might not suffice to catalyze more fundamental reforms. The scandal could have yielded quite different outcomes if the POS had been less favorable and RFEF had employed better crisis management. Thus, the key lesson for women's football activists is that it is important to seize the political momentum created by a scandal to mitigate the limitations of the public attention cycle.
In theoretical terms, our case study serves to emphasize that scandals represent deeply contextualized and processual phenomena characterized by complex strategic interactions, which make simple causal attribution and generalizations very difficult. Moreover, our case study illustrates some conceptual limitations. Key concepts, such as the POS are rather vaguely defined, which allows for quite different ad hoc specifications making it difficult to distinguish context and phenomenon. The lack of conceptual precision also limits the evaluation of outcomes. Hence, it is not quite clear to what extent and how effectively the “kissing scandal” has transformed the POS. Besides the removal of compromised officials, the most tangible outcome was to accelerate the delayed implementation of gender quotas. The later over-fulfillment of these requirements emerged as a useful tactic for RFEF to demonstrate responsiveness. Yet, the RFEF board is not just gender-balanced, but it includes representatives of women's football key stakeholders. The scandal has also resulted in changes in the RFEF women's football department and improved conditions for the women's national team. Given that women's sport activists have demanded gender quotas in sport organizations to create top-down momentum for more gender equity in sport organizations (Adriaanse and Schofield, 2014), one might diagnose a substantial transformation of the POS. However, the importance of the broader POS for process outcomes nurtures skepticism that stronger female representation alone will facilitate changes in organizational priorities and resource allocation. It remains to be seen how successful women's football activists can exploit their improved representation within football governance in case the political saliency of gender equality ceases and they cannot rely on strong political allies.
To summarize our findings: the “kissing scandal” suggests that scandals can indeed transform the POS in favor of marginalized actors in sport organizations. Yet, it might need strong political allies and willingness to engage in more confrontative actions to avoid that scarce and short-lived public attention and scapegoating tactics limit a scandal's impact.
Supplemental Material
sj-docx-1-irs-10.1177_10126902261421454 - Supplemental material for Scandalization as catalyzer for marginalized stakeholders: The impact of the Luis Rubiales “kissing scandal” on gender relations in Spanish football
Supplemental material, sj-docx-1-irs-10.1177_10126902261421454 for Scandalization as catalyzer for marginalized stakeholders: The impact of the Luis Rubiales “kissing scandal” on gender relations in Spanish football by Borja García, Henk Erik Meier, Susana Monserrat Revillo, Samuel Tickell and Roberto López Llorente in International Review for the Sociology of Sport
Footnotes
Acknowledgments
The authors would like to thank Elías Ruiz Monserrat for his assistance in processing the raw data collected.
Data availability
This study uses data that is publicly available through either the LexisNexis news database or the newspapers’ websites. Sources are cited in the article.
Declaration of conflicting interests
The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Ethical considerations
Ethical approval was not needed as there are no human participants in this article and informed consent, therefore, was not required.
Funding
The authors received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
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References
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