The lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, and other non-heterosexual or non-cisgender (LGBTQ+) community is prevalent within sports across the world.

There have been many notable openly LGBTQ+ athletes around the world, including Jason Collins, John Curry, Orlando Cruz, and Billie Jean King. In 1982, the international Gay Games was founded to complement the Olympics. Since then, many LGBTQ sporting organizations have been founded along with sporting events that feature LGBTQ athletes.

While overall, the trend is towards open acceptance of gay athletes, the level of acceptance can vary due to factors such as the athlete's age, sport, and location. As a consequence of the existing homophobia in the sports community, there have been notable lawsuits fighting against this discrimination.

The first and largest international study conducted on homophobia in sports, published in 2015, surveyed 9494 athletes with varying sexual identities. The survey found that 1% of the participants believed that lesbian, gay, and bisexual athletes were 'completely accepted' in sports culture, while 80% of respondents said they had witnessed or experienced homophobia in a sporting environment. The rates and occurrences of discrimination based on sexuality in sports were high, with 62% of survey respondents claiming that homophobia is more common in team sports than any other part of society. Additionally, the study found that the United States was the least LGBTQ+-inclusive country, while Canada ranked the most inclusive.

Notable LGBTQ+ athletes John Curry

John Curry (1949–1994) was a successful British figure skater. Using his unique skating style, Curry won the gold medal in the 1976 Olympic Games in Innsbruck, Austria. Two days after his victory, Curry confirmed a newspaper report about his sexuality, becoming one of the first openly gay gold medalists. Less than three weeks later, and amid the fallout from the revelations, Curry won gold again at the World Figure Skating Championships in Gothenburg. He had completed a "grand slam" of European, Olympic and World championships in under 50 days. Curry died at the age of 44 after a fight with AIDS.

Billie Jean King Billie Jean King is a former number one women's tennis player in the world and, according to KK Ottesen of the Washington Post, is known as a feminist icon. She was born in California in 1943 and competed professionally throughout the 1960s and 1970s.“The Official Website of Billie Jean King.” Billie Jean King Enterprises, 2020, www.billiejeanking.com/. King acknowledged her relationship with Marilyn Barnett when it became public in a May 1981 palimony lawsuit filed by Barnett, making King the first prominent female professional athlete in the world to come out. After this revelation, King took a stronger stance on the push for gay rights and continued to vouch for gender equality, specifically equal pay. In 2009, she was awarded a Presidential Medal of Freedom by the White House in recognition of her involvement in pushing for gender equality and the fact she was a notable and successful openly lesbian athlete.Ware, Susan. “The Outing of Billie Jean King.” The Perils of Celebrity and Sexuality, University of North Carolina Press, 2011, pp. 179–206. JSTOR.

Jason Collins

Jason Collins (1978–2026) was a US collegiate and professional basketball player. Collins played Division One basketball at Stanford University where he received First Team All-Pac10 honors in the 2000–2001 season. Later, he was drafted in the first round of the National Basketball Association (NBA) draft where he played 13 seasons. In 2013, Collins came out as gay in a Sports Illustrated article written in the first person with the help of a journalist, which officially made him the first openly gay NBA player. In 2014, he played for the Brooklyn Nets of the NBA, making him the first gay athlete to be out while actively playing in any of the four major North American professional sports leagues. Although his reveal did not come without its critics, Collins received positive support and was pictured on the cover of Time Magazine's Top 100 Most Influential People. He died in May 2026 from brain cancer.

Michael Sam Michael Sam, born in 1990, was a US collegiate football player at the University of Missouri. At Missouri, in his final season in 2013, Sam was named the Southeastern Conference (SEC) Defensive Player of the Year, and he was also named an All-American. Following his collegiate career, in an interview with ESPN, Sam openly came out as gay. In April 2014, Sam was selected in the seventh round of the National Football League (NFL) draft by the St. Louis Rams, becoming the first openly gay athlete ever to be drafted into the NFL. Subsequently, Sam was awarded the 2014 ESPYS Arthur Ashe Courage Award for "courageously announc[ing] he was gay prior to the NFL draft." However, the Rams released him during the final preseason roster cuts. He also spent time on the Dallas Cowboys' practice squad before being waived. He signed with the Montreal Alouettes before the 2015 season, and became the first publicly gay player to play in a Canadian Football League regular-season game. However, he left the league after that one game.

Megan Rapinoe

Megan Rapinoe, born in 1985, is a notable women's soccer player. Rapinoe is a two-time FIFA Women's World Cup champion with the United States women's national soccer team, the latter of which she was awarded the Golden Boot and Golden Ball award for her performance in the tournament. Rapinoe is openly lesbian, and in 2013 she received the Board of Directors Award by the Los Angeles Gay and Lesbian Center for her role in activism for the LGBTQ+ community. The world champion is also well known for her activism in other sectors, such as gender and racial inequality.

Homophobia in sports culture Heteronormativity, from professional sports to children's athletics, can be seen as the dominant paradigm in sports culture. It is defined as the view of heterosexuality as the standard or preferred sexuality, and this exclusive way of thinking is often taken to the extreme in sports culture, which subsequently places an emphasis on hegemonic masculinity. Arnd Krüger has shown that the history of homosexuality in sports is closely linked to the history of sports and goes back to antiquity.A. KRÜGER (1999). "The Homosexual and Homoerotic in Sport", in: James Riordan & Arnd Kreuger (eds.): The International Politics of Sport in the 20th Century. London: Routledge, pp.191–216. The prevalence of heteronormative thinking in athletics has led to a sports culture that is traditionally highly intolerant to homosexuality. This attitude has been documented in adolescent sports especially, as a recent study by Danny Osborne and William E. Wagner, III showed that male adolescents who participated in popular sports, such as football, basketball, and baseball were significantly more likely to hold homophobic attitudes than other peers their age. In 1995, three athletes (in the NFL, NBA and track and field) who spoke to The Advocate said that they were more afraid of the reaction of their teammates than the media response.

In a 2009 study on the well-being of same-sex-attracted youth in the United States, Lindsey Wilkinson and Jennifer Pearson found that lower self-esteem and higher rates of depression in same-sex attracted youth were correlated with the prevalence of football in high schools. Sociology researchers Sartore and Cunningham also found similar stigmatization in the view of homosexual coaches, as high school parents were shown to be unwilling to allow their children to be coached by someone who is gay or lesbian. They also found a similar attitude from high school athletes themselves toward participating on teams coached by either gay or lesbian coaches. However, recent scholars have documented an increasing trend toward openly gay athletes in high school and collegiate level sports.

Sports leagues and individuals In North America, few athletes are out in the four major men's professional leagues: Major League Baseball (MLB), National Basketball Association (NBA), National Football League (NFL), and National Hockey League (NHL). Very few atheletes have come out while playing, with most coming out after retirement. This same trend can also be found in England's Professional Footballers' Association (PFA), as a 2010 ad campaign devised by the PFA against homophobia failed because no professional football (here meaning soccer) player was willing to associate themselves with the advertisement. The trend is also prevalent among English soccer fans. A 2018 study showed that among live attendance fans, the use of homophobic slurs is extremely common. The study finds that the motive behind the offensive language is that the fans are"try[ing] to gain an advantage for their team."Magrath, Rory. "'To Try and Gain an Advantage for My Team': Homophobic and Homosexually Themed Chanting among English Football Fans." Sociology, vol. 52, no. 4, 2017, pp. 709–726.,

Out on the Fields, a survey initiated in 2015 by members of the organizing committee of Bingham Cup Sydney 2014, the world cup of gay rugby, and members of the Sydney Convicts, Australia's first gay rugby union club, is the first and largest international study conducted on homophobia in sports.Denison E, Kitchen A. (2015). Out on the Fields: The first international study on homophobia in sport. Repucom, Australian Sports Commission, Federation of Gay Games. Accessed through: www.outonthefields.com It surveyed 9494 athletes with varying sexual identities (25% of which identified as heterosexual). The survey found that 1% of the participants believed that lesbian, gay, and bisexual athletes were 'completely accepted' in sports culture, while 80% of respondents said they had witnessed or experienced homophobia in a sporting environment. The rates and occurrences of discrimination based on sexuality in sports are high with 62% of survey respondents claiming that homophobia is more common in team sports than any other part of society. Additionally, the study found that the United States was the least LGBTQ+ inclusive country, while Canada ranked the most inclusive.

There is a gender difference in the responses to male and female athletes who come out as LGBT. Brittney Griner softened the blowback from announcing her sexuality by casually coming out in an interview almost immediately after being drafted into the Women's National Basketball Association (WNBA) in the United States. This was a month before Jason Collins came out in the NBA, and there was a media uproar for him, while there was barely any coverage over Griner's announcement.

International Olympics and Paralympics

LGBTQ athletes have competed in the Olympic and Paralympic games since their origins. Summer sports tend to have more out athletes than winter sports. The number of out LGBTQ athletes has trended upwards over the years, peaking in the 2020 Summer Olympics with 331 out athletes and the 2020 Summer Paralympics with 51 out athletes. Controversies and protests have resulted, often affected by which country was hosting.

LGBTQ leagues, teams, and events

Multi-sport One of the earliest-recorded gay sports event organizing committees is the Federation of Gay Games (initially known as the United States Gay Olympics Committee), which was established in 1980 by Tom Waddell, Mark Brown and Paul Mart.