Re the study for what it's worth - typing as I read so if I contradict myself bear with.
2073 statements from PL, Serie A, La Liga and Ligue 1 but only 80 games looked at.
643 'unique players of various races and skin tones' looked at - with skin tone coming from Football Manager 2020's database determination.
They are working on the basis that 'bias exists' because the distribution of comments (despite skin tone) aren't similar - a fair point, but they don't seem to have taken into account player makeup %'s to balance that.
Edit - they have. 643 players, 433 classified as light skin tone, 210 as dark skin tone. That does significantly change my thoughts - but the question about which players were looked at remains valid.
They also claim this is a large sample size to help justify their conclusions...and I would patently disagree with that, as presumably 20 games in each division in an entire season, well it's not just player makeup in each division that hasn't been qualified here, it also takes no account of which sides have featured and what their own player makeup % is or the players in those teams with established physical style traits that will always get leaned on.
To not make this an essay, the results are interesting but some of their determining factors to comments seem a little trite and soft. ie commentators comment more on athletic, speed, strength when discussing black players - but again not knowing who was looked at, if you're talking about the likes of Sterling, Mings, Sissoko et al, I wouldn't say it was bias to highlight their strengths.
Just as I wouldn't say it was bias to say Jack goes down too easily, our Hourihane is lightweight etc etc.
They tag these as being stereotypes with a bias - but Sissoko is imposing physically, Sterling is quick and athletic and so on - but there is a larger distinction there that is actually believable in some ways when it comes to the topics of commentator conversation ie athletic abilities much in the way someone else commented above about the 100 metres and White Men Can't Jump.
With that said, discussing hard work, form, quality, leadership and background had some interesting results that I find more believable as bias - darker skill tones don't work as hard, don't have the same quality or intelligence and can't be leaders for example.
That jumps out more as potentially being unconscious bias because of the historical overtones.
Edit - to reduce bias and add additional commonality, far from perfect but they did multiple the comments about dark tone to more match the number of white tone players looked at. Again the flaw there is the doubling and not knowing the players, but having read it now I'm of a mind to definitely accept there is unconscious bias - but not necessarily racism in the true sense as the study needs to go deeper as short of the stereotypes involved....it doesn't prove malice, discrimination, it doesn't disprove that the comments can't actually be factual about a players strengths....it simply shows for me, it needs a closer look.
With all of that said, the citations and papers used to define 'racial bias' 'stereotypes' and the like, have already grounded themselves on the side of the fence they sit.
ie Rada & Wulfemeyer (2005) “Portraying African Americans as naturally athletic or endowed with God-given athleticism exacerbates the stereotype by creating the impression of a lazy athlete, one who does not have to work at his craft.”
Doesn't mean a black player can never be praised or commented on for holding those exact skills and it doesn't automatically mean they are lazy. It's not white privilege to suggest Jack, Ronaldo, Messi, Gazza were naturally skillful who didn't have to work at their craft. Just as it doesn't apply to the likes of Thierry Henry, Ronaldinho, Pele etc. Athleticism itself is not racist - James Milner for example, he worked as hard for that drive as someone like Vieria.
Again though it's a bloody good read, it hasn't been thrown together to suit the moment without putting the work in to show what it claims. Given my comments above, to repeat myself, it may not intrinsically prove institutionalised racism or bias with deliberate malicious intent - but there are some stark standouts (even without the additional details I mention above that would be needed) that are too wide to not acknowledge.
What it shows is it's worthy of further investigation in a fair wider study - as looking at their methodology, it was 20 games per league (selected at random so we still don't know the clubs) but they only took commentary from 15 minute segments, randomly selected from each of the 80 games - to provide an overview of the 90 minutes. So it doesn't account for which players were shining, which were shrinking, which team were on top and whether players had crumbled or grown etc - building wider, whether they were returning from injury and needed to get up to speed etc.
It also rightly acknowledged negative comments aren't automatically racial bias, and to me at least, we are back to knowing which commentators featured - age, background etc - because they seemed to have looked at 'in the heat of the moment and without chance to think' how easily each commentator slipped into a normal routine of language.
“analysis centered around what was said about whom and how frequently.”
So without meaning to call out each commentator, it would also be nice to know (80 games, 2 commentators a piece?) whether it was a smaller number of individual commentators skewing the results for everyone else or whether it was more broadstroked.
In terms of skin tone re Football Manager they also admit themselves the possibility for mis-identification which was also good to see. They didn't qualify on race, heritage, creed, nationality - they purely went on FM's 1-20 skin tone rating. But there are naturally issues there.
If anyone is an anal as me, that was a good read, but I'd have liked it to have gone further and I'd have certainly liked a differentiation between results from each of the leagues chosen.