Social media abuse in tennis: Female players faced 12,000 abusive posts in 2025
The WTA’s players’ board said in a statement: “Although it comes from a relatively small number of accounts, its impact could be significant. It is reassuring to know that the WTA and World Tennis are taking this seriously, supporting the players and making clear that such behavior is unacceptable.”
“The progress highlighted in this report demonstrates the value of working collaboratively across the sport and with our partners to identify abusive behaviour, support players and take meaningful action against those responsible.”
The threat matrix uses artificial intelligence supported by human analysts to evaluate content on X, Instagram, YouTube, TikTok and Facebook.
The WTA and World Tennis said “collective action” was needed to make “significant progress” in tackling abuse.
In 2025, British Katie Boulter told BBC Sport that she had received death threats.
Other players have called for authentication to be introduced by social media platforms to try to resolve the issue.
The WTA and World Tennis added: “The information from this report is crucial in helping us expand our knowledge of the issue and take decisive action to protect victims of disgusting online abuse by punishing those responsible.
“While today’s findings demonstrate the effectiveness of this action to date, further significant progress requires collective action from social media companies, law enforcement, governing bodies and the gambling industry, and we will continue to proactively advocate for this.”
In the men’s match, a new artificial intelligence-supported system is used to combat serious harassment, allowing 162 thousand posts to be blocked annually.
