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A Tradition Unlike Any Other: Angry Flyers Fans Comment on the Pride Month Facebook Post
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June is Pride Month, which means the teams change their social media graphics to rainbow colors and post things like this:
The Flyers posts always feature the biggest shitshow in the comments. That goes for Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram, though Facebook is probably the most toxic of the three because the user base typically trends older and more boomer-like, and that’s where more of the traditional and conservative viewpoints are sourced.
In no particular order, some highlights from the Facebook replies, which are currently at 2,300:
- How about a Stanley Cup flag?! It has only been 50 years since the last one!!
- Let’s keep all the noise out.. lets just play hockey and celebrate when it’s hockey related…. like Lord Stan is coming home..
- please concentrate this hard on putting a championship team on the ice!
- How about VETERANS month?
- We don’t have a center for our first two lines lol
- I’m going to need to call up Ivan Provorov quick and get his thoughts on this
- I thought they traded Laughton
- As long as you give players, coaches and fans the option to opt out it’s ok since it’s someone else’s pride your asking straights to celebrate.
- When is straight month?
- Try celebrating veterans instead. Maybe more people would take this team seriously. And bring back the Kate Smith statue for the love of god.
- Thanks to the hockey players parents for being straight to procreate. #straightpride
- Not today Diddy
- If only you’d celebrate defence and offence
- This is why I quit watching. They ditched Kate and went woke.
- Boooooo ! Our virtual signaling hockey team is at it again. I’ve been waiting 50 years for some hockey pride.
- If the Broad Street Bullies were playing today they’d tear that flag to pieces!
- Philadelphia, two minute minor for too many men in the shower..
So on and so forth. There are certainly messages in support of Pride Month, but fewer and further between. The Eagles post has four times the amount of replies as the Flyers post, but it seems to be less toxic overall. I don’t think it’s a hot take or factually incorrect to say that hockey fan demographic is whiter and more conservative, especially in this area. You’ve got the Kate Smith statue situation, which angered a lot of people and still does, so nobody should be surprised by how Flyers fans respond to the Pride stuff compared to what you see on the Sixers or Union Facebook pages. Those fan bases are more diverse and progressive while the Phillies and Eagles are probably somewhere between the other three teams on this arbitrary scale we’ve made up.
On the other side of the discussion, you could certainly ask yourself if this amounts to corporate virtue signaling, and if it does, what’s the goal? What’s the intention? Does it match with a larger Comcast philosophy to promote DEI policy? Are there hockey-related initiatives wrapped into Pride Month? Or is it just being done to check a box? I would love to be a fly on the wall in meetings with the Flyers ticketing department, to find out how many people really act on their distaste for these types of things and cancel their season tickets and/or raise hell about it. Did DEI reach its height during the BLM movement? Did Trump’s re-election serve as a referendum on how the country feels about this? It’s pretty interesting to think about how different corporations are approaching it now, in 2025.
Thing is, when the Flyers have Pride Night during the season, it’s always paired with initiatives to celebrate and recognize local LGTBQ groups. There’s special merchandise, a festival, and promotion of LGBT businesses and community members. There is meat on the bone and a comprehensive effort behind it, and the only controversy to take place was when Ivan Provorov refused to wear the warm up for religious reasons, because he’s Russian Orthodox. Then his dog was bombarded with hateful DMs on Instagram and his girlfriend had to ask people to cut it out. But other than that, it went off without a hitch!
In this case, there’s no news article on the Flyers website. There’s no event or anything. They’re not even playing hockey right now. It’s just a generic, cross-platform social media post showing support for equality and inclusivity, and for members of the LGBTQ community, that’s meaningful.
It’s not like Keith Jones showed up at the local school board meeting to talk about puberty blockers and bathroom usage. Now that would be a story!
Kevin has been writing about Philadelphia sports since 2009. He spent seven years in the CBS 3 sports department and started with the Union during the team's 2010 inaugural season. He went to the academic powerhouses of Boyertown High School and West Virginia University. email - k.kinkead@sportradar.com