Tennis Players Face Social Media Abuse in 2025: Inside the Numbers Behind the Sport’s Growing Crisis

Tennis players face social media abuse in 2025 at a scale that shows little sign of slowing down. A new report from the WTA, ITF, All England Lawn Tennis Club and USTA — built on data from Signify Group’s Threat Matrix service — confirms what many players have been saying publicly for years: online harassment has become an unavoidable part of professional tennis, and gambling culture is driving much of it.

The Numbers Behind the Headlines

The report analyzed more than 1.2 million social media posts and comments across the year. Of those, over 12,000 were categorized as abusive, and 3,726 were classified as “serious abuse” — a bucket that includes violent, sexual, racist, and directly threatening content. That total is essentially flat compared to 2024, despite a season of heavier investment in detection and moderation tools.

There was measurable progress on the enforcement side. Sixty-six percent of serious abusive posts identified during the year were removed from platforms, and 35 accounts tied to 12 individuals were escalated to law enforcement. Encouragingly, 89% of accounts responsible for serious abuse in 2024 did not reappear on the list in 2025, suggesting that bans and legal referrals are having some deterrent effect even as the overall volume of hostility stays stubbornly high.

Gamblers Remain the Biggest Source

The single clearest driver of abuse continues to be sports betting. Gambling-related accounts were responsible for 42% of all verified abusive posts in 2025, and a striking 59% of posts flagged as serious abuse. That’s a slight improvement from 2024, when gamblers were linked to 48% of identified harmful posts, but it still means the majority of the worst harassment aimed at players traces back to bettors upset about match outcomes rather than genuine fans or critics.

Players Are Speaking Out

The statistics only tell part of the story. Several high-profile players have described the human cost directly. Britain’s Katie Boulter told the BBC she received death threats during the year, and has joined other players in calling for identity verification requirements on social platforms as a way to curb anonymous harassment. Fellow British player Heather Watson has spoken about receiving her first death threat at age 18 — a reminder that this abuse often starts before players even reach the top of the sport.

Top-ranked players haven’t been spared either. Aryna Sabalenka, Daria Kasatkina, and Coco Gauff have all previously discussed the toll of abusive messages on their mental health and match preparation. German player Eva Lys took a different approach during her Bad Homburg campaign, publicly responding with irony to a fan’s abusive comments — turning a moment of harassment into a pointed statement about the culture surrounding the sport.

A Sport-Wide Response

The WTA’s Player Board didn’t mince words in its response, calling the situation “unacceptable.” The organization emphasized that while the abuse comes from a relatively small number of accounts, its impact on the players targeted can be severe and lasting. Both the WTA and World Tennis stressed that meaningful progress will require what they called “collective action” — cooperation not just from tennis’s governing bodies, but from social media companies, law enforcement, and the gambling industry itself.

The men’s game has pursued a parallel effort. A newer AI-driven system introduced on that side of the sport reportedly blocked more than 162,000 abusive posts over the past year, suggesting the scale of the problem is comparable across both tours even where reporting methods differ.

Why This Matters Beyond Tennis

The reality that tennis players face social media abuse in 2025 at this volume says as much about the broader state of online sports culture as it does about tennis specifically. Athletes across nearly every sport now compete not just against opponents on the court or field, but against a digital environment where a single missed shot can trigger a wave of targeted hostility from strangers who lost money betting on the outcome.

The Threat Matrix findings suggest that detection technology and enforcement partnerships can meaningfully reduce repeat offenses — the 89% non-recurrence rate among 2024’s worst offenders is real progress. But as long as overall abuse volume stays flat year over year, the underlying pressure on players, particularly young and rising talents most exposed to public scrutiny, isn’t going away. Real change, as tennis’s own governing bodies have acknowledged, will require the platforms themselves — and the gambling operators profiting from the matches — to treat player safety as their responsibility too, not just the sport’s.