New tool finds vast online abuse of tennis players
Tennis players
last year received abuse so threatening that 15 cases were escalated to law enforcement agencies, according to a joint report released Tuesday by the Women's Tennis Association and the
International Tennis Federation
.
The report, which covers the 2024 season, lays bare the scale of abuse directed at players on social media. It also offers a reminder that the detected abuse only scratches the surface.
From January to December in 2024, an artificial intelligence
threat analysis
system analyzed 1.6 million posts and comments. It verified around 8,000 posts and comments sent from 4,200 accounts as abusive, violent or threatening.
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The report identified 458 players as targeted with direct abuse or threats, with five players receiving 26% of the posts classified as abusive. Ninety-seven social media accounts were responsible for 23% of all detected abuse.
According to the data analysis, angry gamblers sent 40% of all detected abuse last year. Of the 10 most prolific accounts, responsible for 12% of all abuse detected, nine have either been suspended or have deleted their posts or had them removed by the
relevant platform
. One account sent 263 abusive messages in 2024, but has not posted any abusive content in 2025 to date.
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Of the 15 incidents reported to law enforcement agencies, four took place at the
Grand Slam
events and one at the
Olympics
. The other 10 were from tour events. Three were submitted to the
FBI
, with 12 investigated by other national law enforcement bodies. They led to individuals being barred from venues and having tickets rescinded.
Signify Group's
Threat Matrix
service, which went live in January 2024, is designed to help protect players by detecting and filtering out abusive messages through a combination of artificial intelligence and human analysts. All players competing in WTA Tour and ITF World Tennis Tour events (and WTA and ITF players competing in the four Grand Slam events) are automatically covered by the service.
A Signify Group representative said in an email that: "targeted abuse is defined by a player's handle being referenced in the content of a message or posted on their profile on platforms where accounts are not referenced directly.
"Our system proactively gathers every mention of handles or comment on profiles and then analyzes the rest of the content of the message for abusive, threatening or discriminatory content. If there is problematic content sat alongside that account in a comment or post, our system flags it for review then passes to our human analyst team, who carefully review every AI-flagged message. They are then able to confirm if the flag is accurate or not."
But targeted abuse is just the start. During last month's French Open, Jessica Pegula, the world No. 3, said that abuse always finds a way to enter her timeline, even if not directed at her.
"These bettors are insane and delusional," Pegula wrote in the wake of her fourth-round defeat to French qualifier Loïs Boisson. "I don't allow DMs, and try to remember when to shut my comments off during tournament weeks."
She added: "This stuff has never really bothered me much, but does any other sport deal with this to our level? I'd love to know because it seems to be predominantly tennis? It's so disturbing.
"Every person on tour deals with it. It's so bad. Those are just really small snippets. I get told my family should get cancer and die from people on here on a regular basis. Absolutely crazy."
Bettors and angry fans will name players in abusive comments after a loss, even if they do not message or tag them on social media when doing so. The normalization of this kind of abuse has become a major issue for the sport, and is the natural next step for people who have been blocked or cannot message the targets of their abuse directly.
The International Tennis Federation and the WTA and ATP Tours share match data with providers linked to sports betting. Income from those deals goes toward the funding of the tours.
Pegula, who sits on the WTA Players' Council, said on Tuesday: "
Online abuse
is unacceptable, and something that no player should have to endure. I welcome the work that the WTA and ITF are doing with Threat Matrix to identify and take action against the abusers, whose behavior is so often linked to gambling.
"But it's not enough on its own. It's time for the gambling industry and social media companies to tackle the problem at its source and act to protect everyone facing these threats."
Caroline Garcia, the French former world No. 4 who will retire later this year, opened up about the damaging effects of social media abuse at the U.S. Open last August. She wrote on Instagram that unhealthy betting accounted for most of the abuse, and emphasized how damaging it was to players who were already emotionally destroyed after a defeat.
"If someone decided to say these things to me in public, he could have legal issues," Garcia wrote. "So why online we are free to do anything? Shouldn't we reconsider anonymity online?"
A Betting and
Gaming Council
representative told BBC Sport that the organization does "not tolerate abuse on social media, which has no place in betting or sport."
In a statement, the organization said: "It is vital social media companies take swift action against users, remove offensive content and work more closely with BGC members on measures to further strengthen safer gambling. Each month, around 22.5 million people in Britain enjoy a bet, on the lottery, in bookmakers, casinos, bingo halls and online, and the overwhelming majority do so safely and responsibly."
Meta, which owns social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram, did not immediately respond to a request to comment.
Jonathan Hirshler, the CEO of Signify Group, which developed the Threat Matrix service, said that the fact that a lot of the abuse came from a small number of accounts "means that we are able to be even more focused working with the platforms to ensure successful take down, support the tennis bodies to drive law enforcement intervention for the most egregious accounts and work with event security teams to ensure prolific abusers are unable to attend tournaments."
The threat of online abuse can also tip into real-world threats. At the French Open, Clara Tauson of Denmark and Jakub Mensik of the Czech Republic confronted bettors who abused them from the stands. And in March, at a practice session during the Miami Open, Iga Swiatek was confronted by someone who has regularly abused her online. The tournament gave Swiatek additional security after the incident, which a representative for the five-time Grand Slam champion described as "a direct transition from verbal aggression online to harassment in the real world."
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