Sports bettors lead the online mob of harassment that WTA players face

Leylah Fernandez shares behind-the-scenes glimpses of her life as a pro tennis player on social media: scenic travel photos, workouts, fashionable outfits and events with young fans through her foundation.

Building a social media presence puts players in control of their stories, from personal convictions to TikTok dances or sponsor content.

But there’s an ugly reality for today’s WTA players online too, where negative comments, harassment and threats have become commonplace.

Disgruntled sports bettors are the most common offenders.

“Social media, everybody’s on it ... they can tweet something positive, something negative, they can tweet threatening messages,” said Fernandez, the Canadian world No. 34, at Toronto’s National Bank Open this week.

“It can be anything that they want, and more times than not there will be no consequences, because you can’t find them.”

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World No. 3 Jessica Pegula talked in Toronto this week about getting terrible messages all the time, whether she wins or loses, across different platforms. The American blocks those users, but some have ways to resurface, like finding an old post on which to comment.

“It’s not just in our sport, it seems like it’s in a lot of sports,” said Pegula. “But I think women specifically, it definitely seems like it’s catered to be worse.”

Pegula turns off comments during her matches because nasty posts mostly come during or right after she plays, and then they stop. She forgot to do it before her second-round match in Toronto this week and dreaded what she’d see.

“It’s a very reactionary response you get from these bettors … so when you can limit your comments, you’re usually okay,” said Pegula. “It’s unfortunate that people suck sometimes.”

The WTA says angry gamblers are responsible for most of the abuse, but vows it’s making progress against online abuse, using data from its second annual report on the topic, released in July.

Along with World Tennis, they implemented Signify Group’s Threat Matrix service in January, 2024, across pro tennis tours to proactively protect players and support investigations into serious online abuse.

More than 10,000 players and officials are covered by the AI-led initiative, which has human analysts reviewing content in 57 languages, flagged from open-source data across X, Instagram, YouTube, TikTok and Facebook.

A team of investigators and risk assessors then gather evidence on the most concerning accounts, and work to prevent real-world harm.

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More than 1.2 million posts and comments were analyzed across 2025. More than 12,000 posts were categorized as abusive, and 3,726 called serious abuse, including violent, sexual, racist and targeted threats.

They removed 66 per cent of serious abusive posts or comments and escalated 35 accounts to law enforcement. Some 89 per cent of accounts responsible for serious abuse in 2024 did not reappear in 2025.

Angry gamblers were responsible for 42 per cent of all verified abuse detected in 2025 (a two per cent increase on 2024) and 59 per cent of all serious abuse.

The report highlights the disproportionate role played by a small number of prolific abusive offenders. Just nine per cent of abusive accounts were responsible for 87 per cent of all abuse categorized as “high concern,” while prolific accounts were responsible for 49 per cent of all detected abuse.

World No. 4 Coco Gauff finds TikTok and Instagram mostly positive, but sees loads of negativity on X. To take back power, she’ll sometimes reply to horrible comments with a smiley face emoji.

“I feel like that riles people up,” she said.

The American two-time Grand Slam champ listed off the perks of social media: making a fan’s day by responding to their birthday request, having control over the stories she wants to tell and posting to clear up issues if she feels she’s been misunderstood. But you need strategies to avoid the bad stuff, especially on match days.

“With more exposure to personal things, you are exposing yourself to more comments and the negativity … it does suck at times,” said Gauff. “Growing up in the sport – I mean, I burst on at 15 – so in the beginning it was tough, but I try my best to just use the block button.”

Some players ignore ugly, threatening posts. Others have dragged it from the shadows into the light for the public to see.

British player Katie Boulter showed BBC a sampling of the hundreds of disgusting online messages she’s received, like: “Hope you get cancer,” “Candles and a coffin for your entire family,” and, “Go to hell, I lost money my mother sent me.”

German player Eva Lys has shared a sense of it too.

“I block religiously. I’ve had a lot of hate after losing the first round, and it was, like, the first time where I was a little bit overwhelmed with how many people were hating on me,” Lys told the Tennis Channel earlier this season. “It’s usually because they’re telling me I should spend less time on Instagram, I should do fewer photo shoots, less of this, less of that, and focus more on practice.”

Sometimes text bots are deployed to leave automated hateful posts and skew public sentiment to disrupt online communities.

“When I was younger, social media was nicer sometimes, you know, it was a way to actually connect with people ... now it’s so intense,” Iga Swiatek said in Toronto this week. “If you go to your inbox where the bots are writing bad stuff, you’re not going to have fun.”

It may be easy to dismiss some of the negative commenters as senseless, faceless and annoying, while other instances are frightening and bleed into real life.

In 2025, a man was ejected from the Dubai Tennis Championships after he exhibited “fixated behaviour” toward British tennis star Emma Raducanu.

Swiatek was given extra security at the 2025 Miami Open after being verbally attacked during her practice session by a man who had sent her harassing messages on social media.

Earlier this year, two WTA players received separate threats that included photos of guns, telling them to lose their matches or their families would be hurt. The messages came to them via WhatsApp and included personal details about their families – such as addresses, phone numbers and the cars they drove.

Both women, Italian Lucrezia Stefanini and Hungarian Panna Udvardy, alerted the WTA, who provided security. Police got involved. Each posted about the harrowing experiences on Instagram.

Combating the online abuse players experience is a massive job, and the WTA and World Tennis urge the gambling industry and others to help.

“Further significant progress requires collective action from social media companies, law enforcement, governing bodies and the gambling industry,” said a statement from the WTA. “We will continue to proactively advocate for that.”