Overview
- The WTA and World Tennis released a report on Thursday that analysed roughly 1.2 million posts from 2025 and identified more than 12,000 abusive items, of which 3,726 were classified as serious threats involving violence, sexual or racist language.
- Signify Group’s AI-led Threat Matrix, supported by human analysts, attributed 42% of all verified abuse and 59% of the serious abuse to gamblers, reinforcing a pattern first flagged in the 2024 analysis.
- Platforms and investigators removed 66% of serious content and the organisations escalated 35 accounts tied to 12 individuals to law enforcement, while the number of identified abusive accounts rose from 39 to 68.
- Players including Amanda Anisimova and Katie Boulter have reported severe personal harm from online attacks, with messages prompting fear, death threats and withdrawals from social media for some athletes.
- The WTA and World Tennis are urging social platforms, police and betting firms to share tools and data to detect perpetrators more quickly, and some operators have begun limited adoption of investigative tools such as Threat Matrix.