Online Abuse in Women's Tennis: What the WTA/ITF Data Shows

Sport has always carried emotion. Fans celebrate, criticize, analyze, and sometimes get angry. But in women’s tennis, especially in recent years, the line between emotional reaction and digital abuse has been crossed in ways that can no longer be dismissed as “part of the game.”

After losing a match, a tennis player may open their phone and find not sports criticism, but death threats, rape threats, racist abuse, or messages wishing harm on their family. Often, these are not isolated comments. They can arrive in waves — dozens, hundreds, sometimes thousands of messages.

A significant share of this abuse comes from people who have lost money betting on matches.

This problem does not affect only the biggest stars. It also affects younger and lower-ranked players competing on the WTA and ITF circuits — athletes who often do not have large PR teams, agents, or dedicated social media support. Many manage their own accounts and read their own messages.

That is why this issue needs to be discussed openly.

This Is Not “Just a Few Bad Comments”

In 2025, the WTA and ITF published a season-wide report on online abuse and threats directed at tennis players. The findings were based on data from Threat Matrix, a service created by Signify Group that combines AI monitoring with human analysis.

Between January and December 2024, Threat Matrix found around 8,000 posts and comments from 4,200 accounts that were verified by analysts as abusive, violent, or threatening.

During that same period, 458 players were targeted with direct abuse or threats. Five players received 26% of all identified abuse, while 97 prolific accounts were responsible for 23% of all detected abuse.

These numbers reveal something important: the feeling that “everyone hates me” can be psychologically overwhelming, even when a large share of abuse comes from a relatively small number of highly active accounts. But for the person receiving the messages, statistics do not soften the impact. The nervous system does not calculate percentages. It reacts to threat.

The Role of Sports Betting

One of the most disturbing findings in the WTA and ITF report is the connection between abuse and gambling.

According to the ITF summary of the report, angry gamblers were responsible for 40% of all detected abuse across public social media. In direct abuse — private messages, emails, or other targeted communication — the percentage was even higher: 77% of player-reported direct abuse came from angry gamblers.

This means that many players are not being attacked simply because they had a bad day on court. They are being attacked because someone treated their body, concentration, performance, and career as part of a financial transaction.

Tennis is particularly vulnerable to this dynamic. Betting is not limited to the final result of a match. People can bet on sets, games, and even individual points. A lost service game, a double fault, or a missed break point can trigger immediate rage from someone who has just lost money.

For the bettor, it may be a “bad bet.” For the player, it may become a death threat in their inbox.

“We Are Humans”: Caroline Garcia Speaks Out

In 2024, Caroline Garcia became one of the most visible voices speaking out against this issue. After losing in the first round of the US Open, she shared examples of abusive messages she had received and described the abuse as deeply damaging.

BBC Sport reported that Garcia had received “hundreds” of messages following recent defeats, including threats directed at her family. In her post, Garcia wrote:

Maybe you can think that it doesn’t hurt us. But it does. We are humans.

She also pointed to “unhealthy betting” as one of the forces intensifying the abuse tennis players receive online.

The most powerful part of Garcia’s message was its simplicity. Athletes are not avatars in a betting app. They are not fictional characters in a game. They are human beings doing their work under pressure, and then returning to the same phone the rest of us use.

Sloane Stephens: “It Has Never Stopped”

Sloane Stephens, the 2017 US Open champion, has also spoken publicly about the scale of online abuse she receives.

After a US Open loss in 2021, Stephens said she received more than 2,000 abusive and angry messages. Some were racist. Some were threatening. She described the experience as “exhausting and never ending.”

During the 2023 French Open, Stephens said that online racist abuse had been a problem throughout her career:

It has never stopped. If anything, it’s only gotten worse.

Her experience also shows why simple keyword filters are not enough. Abusers change spelling, use symbols, add spaces, or shift language to avoid detection. The problem is not just a word. It is context, intention, repetition, and volume.

Why “Just Don’t Read the Comments” Is Not a Real Solution

One of the most common responses to online abuse is: “Just don’t read the comments.”

It sounds practical. But in reality, it is often unrealistic.

For modern athletes, social media is part of professional life. It is where they communicate with fans, sponsors, media, and their wider community. It is where they announce injuries, celebrate wins, share campaigns, and build their public identity. For lower-ranked players, online visibility can also be essential for attracting support and sponsorship.

Asking athletes to disappear from the internet in order to protect themselves shifts the burden onto the person being targeted.

It is like saying: “If you do not want to be harmed, do not go outside.”

The Psychological Cost of Digital Abuse

From a mental health perspective, online abuse is not “virtual” in its emotional impact. The brain and body respond to threat whether it happens face-to-face or through a screen.

Repeated exposure to threats, humiliation, sexualized violence, and racist abuse can increase stress, disturb sleep, heighten anxiety, and affect concentration. For athletes, this has a particular cost. They are expected to perform under pressure, recover quickly, and maintain precise attention — yet after a match, they may be exposed to messages that activate the opposite systems: vigilance, fear, shame, and emotional overload.

Comments do not stay “under the post.” They enter the body. They enter sleep. They enter training. They enter the relationship an athlete has with their own work.

From Moderation to Prevention

Traditional moderation often arrives too late. A comment is posted. Someone reads it. Someone reports it. Maybe the platform responds.

But the psychological harm may already have happened in the first few seconds.

That is why preventive tools matter: tools that can detect toxicity, abusive intent, and harmful context before the target has to read and process the message.

This is the direction behind Zenfeed.

Zenfeed is not a tool against criticism. Criticism is part of public life, journalism, sport, and debate. A comment like “she did not play well today” is not the same as “I hope you die” or “I will hurt your family.”

There is a major difference between criticism and abuse.

Zenfeed was created to help protect the mental space of people exposed to toxic comments — athletes, creators, activists, experts, and anyone who communicates publicly online. Its purpose is to filter hateful or abusive comments before a person has to see them and carry the emotional impact.

This does not replace the responsibility of platforms, sports organizations, betting companies, or law enforcement. But protective tools can become part of everyday digital hygiene.

This Is Not About Athletes Being “Too Sensitive”

It is important to say this clearly: if someone feels stressed, anxious, or exhausted after receiving hundreds of abusive messages, that does not mean they are weak.

It means they are human.

Professional athletes can handle pressure, discipline, injury, competition, and defeat. But no one should be expected to read death threats and sexual violence as a routine part of their career.

Normalizing this kind of abuse is dangerous because it shifts the boundary of what society considers acceptable. If we accept it for athletes, we may soon accept it for journalists, doctors, teachers, activists, creators, and ordinary people using the internet.

What Can We Do?

First, we can stop minimizing the problem. “It’s just the internet” is not a neutral sentence. It dismisses real psychological harm.

Second, we can stop rewarding abuse with attention. Hostile comments often gain visibility because they provoke reactions — outrage, replies, screenshots, shares. Social platforms reward emotional intensity, and anger is one of the most engaging emotions online.

Third, we can demand accountability from industries that profit from attention and risk — including social media platforms and the betting industry.

Fourth, we can build and use protective tools that do not force people to choose between visibility and mental health.

Athletes should not have to disappear from the internet to feel safe. The internet should become a place where psychological safety is taken seriously.

Final Thought

The stories of WTA players reveal something larger than a tennis problem. They show how quickly digital frustration can turn into abuse when social media, betting culture, anonymity, and weak moderation reinforce one another.

But they also show that change is possible.

When tennis organizations adopt AI protection, when players speak publicly about what they experience, and when tools like Zenfeed are built to protect people before harm reaches them, we move toward a different kind of online space.

One designed with more responsibility. More protection. And more awareness that behind every screen, there is always a human being.

This is also the reasoning behind why comment sections feel toxic in the first place, and why a preventive, context-aware filter — not a keyword list — is what it takes to catch coordinated, high-volume waves of abuse before a person has to read them.

When a Lost Set Turns Into Death Threats: Online Abuse in Women's Tennis