LONDON (AP) - The head of the English Premier League will face no disciplinary action for making disparaging comments about women in a private email exchange with a friend.
A Premier League committee met to consider the matter involving its chief executive Richard Scudamore in London on Monday, with British Prime Minister David Cameron among the high-profile critics of his conduct.
However, Peter McCormick, acting chairman of the Premier League, said in a statement that the league’s 17 clubs - not including the three relegated teams - “resolved unanimously that no further disciplinary action is required or justified.”
An investigation looked at a large quantity of emails and other documents sent by Scudamore and found there was “no evidence of wider discriminatory attitudes or inappropriate language or a general attitude of disrespect to women.”
Praising Scudamore’s “previously unblemished record over 15 years of service to the Premier League,” McCormick added in the statement that women working for the Premier League said there was “no climate of disrespect of women in the workplace.”
Scudamore, who has brokered the deals that have turned the Premier League into the most lucrative and popular division in world football, issued an apology immediately after a British newspaper published parts of the leaked emails.
In a statement released on Monday, he accepted that “entering into email exchanges of this nature was wrong” and “is something that will never be repeated.”
“I appreciate that I have a tremendous amount of hard work to do to convince those in the game who do not know me that my leadership and work in the areas of equality and discrimination to date reflect who I am and what I believe,” he said.
Scudamore pledged he will continue to do his utmost “personally, and through all the Premier League’s means, to help promote diversity and inclusion, develop the women’s game and support women who want be involved in football at any level.”
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