The growth of social media has brought fans closer to their favorite athletes, but it has also created a space where harassment, threats, and hate messages have become an everyday reality for many competitors. In professional tennis, female players have been among the main targets of this phenomenon, facing insults, violent content, sexually explicit attacks, and intimidating messages that go beyond competition and directly affect their personal and emotional well-being.
Aware of this issue, World Tennis and the Women’s Tennis Association (WTA) presented their second annual report on online abuse directed at players, a document that highlights significant progress in identifying and pursuing offenders. Based on the Threat Matrix platform, developed by Signify Group, the report shows that the combination of artificial intelligence, human analysis, and collaboration with security agencies is beginning to deliver measurable results in protecting those who are part of the professional circuit.
Technology and coordination are delivering tangible results
The report reveals that during 2025, more than 1.2 million posts and comments from platforms such as X, Instagram, YouTube, TikTok, and Facebook were analyzed through a monitoring system covering 57 languages and protecting more than 10,000 players and officials across the sport. Of that total, more than 12,000 posts were classified as abusive, while 3,726 were identified as severe abuse, including threats of violence, racist messages, sexually offensive content, and attacks directed at athletes and their families.
The joint strategy made it possible to remove 66% of the most serious abusive content detected and report 35 accounts linked to 12 individuals to law enforcement authorities. The report also highlights that 89% of the accounts responsible for severe abuse during 2024 did not reappear in 2025, while 26 particularly active accounts were removed after posting more than 30 abusive messages each. Together, these accounts were responsible for 21% of all serious abuse cases recorded during the season, demonstrating the impact of taking action against a relatively small group of repeat offenders.
The challenge extends beyond social media
One of the issues that concerns World Tennis and the WTA the most is the connection between online abuse and sports betting. According to the report, frustrated gamblers were responsible for 42% of all verified abuse cases during 2025 and 59% of incidents classified as severe. The research also found that just 9% of abusive accounts generated 87% of all messages considered to be of “high concern,” while repeat offenders accounted for nearly half of all abusive posts detected throughout the year.
Against this backdrop, both organizations insist that the solution requires a coordinated response involving digital platforms, law enforcement agencies, government authorities, and the gambling industry. In this context, they highlighted the addition of Fanatics Sportsbook to the Bad Actor Program as the first sportsbook to use investigative tools such as Threat Matrix to identify and take action against users responsible for abuse on social media. Both the WTA and World Tennis believe that expanding initiatives like this will be essential to further reducing the impact of online abuse and providing a safer environment for athletes competing at the highest level.
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