A Philadelphia Eagles fan who spewed crude insults at a woman rooting for the visiting Green Bay Packers during Sunday’s wild-card playoff game lost his job this week at a New Jersey company that specializes in D.E.I. work because of his conduct, which was caught on a viral video.
The fan, whose name was not released by his former employer, BCT Partners, was also barred from future events at Lincoln Financial Field, the home stadium of the Eagles, a person briefed on the matter told The New York Times.
In the video, which was shared online early Monday by the woman’s fiancé and viewed more than 31 million times on X, the fan repeatedly called her a vulgar name and cursed at her during the Eagles’ opening-round 22-10 victory in the playoffs. The man was sitting in the upper deck, one row behind the couple, who were both wearing Packers jerseys and live outside Philadelphia.
The woman’s fiancé, Alexander Basara, a podcaster who focuses on the Packers, asked internet sleuths to help him to identify the man.
“What it’s like going to Philly just trying to root for your team…” he wrote. “Unprovoked, uncalled for. Packers twitter, help me out and find this guy…… this is not okay I hate that my fiancé had this happen simply cheering for her team.”
In a social media post late on Tuesday, BCT Partners, which is based in East Brunswick, N.J., wrote that it had “decided to part company” with the employee immediately after conducting an internal investigation into his actions at the game.
“We condemn our former employee’s conduct in the strongest possible terms,” the company wrote. “This individual’s conduct and language were vile, disgusting, unacceptable and horrific and have no place in our workplace and society. Such conduct is not who we are and what we stand for.”
Efforts to reach the fan involved in the episode by phone, email and text message on Wednesday were not immediately successful.
On the BCT Partners website, the company describes itself as minority-owned and “D.E.I. champions,” the abbreviation for diversity, equity and inclusion. The site states that the group’s corporate culture is guided by the “South African principle of Ubuntu, translated as ‘I am because we are’ or ‘humanity towards others.’”
The company offered an apology to the woman in the video and said that it was committed to gender equity.
The woman and her fiancé, Mr. Basara, did not immediately respond to requests for comment on Wednesday.
In an interview on Tuesday, the woman and Mr. Basara told NBC10 in Philadelphia that the man sitting behind them grew increasingly confrontational toward the end of the third quarter and started to insult her appearance.
“I think he attacked me more so because I am a woman and I’m not going to punch him in the face, or he didn’t feel threatened by me,” she said.
In a city known for being merciless to visiting sports fans — and where Santa Claus was once pelted with snowballs at halftime during an Eagles game in 1968 — the fan’s actions drew national attention.
It was not the first time this season in the National Football League that a fan’s misconduct made headlines.
In December, a Detroit Lions fan had his season tickets revoked by the team after getting into a shouting match with the Packers coach Matt LaFleur on the field before a game. The fan had been invited to help hold a giant American flag for the national anthem when he started taunting visiting players and coaches, including by making a throat-slashing gesture.
Also in December, the family of an 8-year-old cancer survivor attending a Buffalo Bills game said that they had left early after the girl, a fan of the San Francisco 49ers, the visitors that night, had been pushed by a fan of the home team.
Kirsten Noyes contributed research.
