Boulter, who is 28-year-old and ranked No 39 in the WTA, said she believes many of the abusive messages are sent by people who are placing bets on tennis matches.<\/p>\n
The message threatening her loved ones was sent during her French Open first-round match against Carole Monnet on May 29. After losing the first-set tie-break, Boulter won the match 6-7 (4), 6-1, 6-1.<\/p>\n
But the loss of the tiebreaker prompted the outrage.<\/p>\n
\u201cHope you get cancer,\u201d said one message. Another mentioned damaging her \u201cgrandmother\u2019s grave if she\u2019s not dead by tomorrow\u201d and \u201ccandles and a coffin for your entire family.\u201d A third said: \u201cGo to hell, I lost money my mother sent me.\u201d<\/p>\n
Boulter, who shared with the BBC screenshots of the messages, said she is worried about the toll the widespread abuse takes on younger players.<\/p>\n
\u201cAt the very start of my career, it\u2019s probably something I took very personally… getting comments about the way you look,” she said. “It becomes more apparent every single time you go on your phone.<\/p>\n
“I think it increases in number and it also increases in the level of things that people say. I don\u2019t think there\u2019s anything off the cards now.\u201d<\/p>\n
Many other players have previously reported online abuse. In a bid to try to protect athletes from that sort of abuse, the International Tennis Federation (ITF), Women\u2019s Tennis Association (WTA), All England Lawn Tennis Club and United States Tennis Association in 2023 launched the Threat Matrix.<\/p>\n
The program monitors public-facing social accounts for abusive and threatening content on social networks. It also provides support for players.<\/p>\n
According to statistics provided to the BBC by data science firm Signify, the ITF and WTA, about 8,000 abusive, violent or threatening messages were sent publicly to 458 tennis players through their social media accounts in 2024.<\/p>\n
Boulter, who received abuse after wins as well as losses, said a lot of it comes from people who have placed bets on her matches.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs far as death threats, it\u2019s just not something you want to be reading straight after an emotional loss,\u201d she said. \u201cA lot of the time you get it after you win as well.\u201d<\/p>\n
According to Signify, angry gamblers sent 40% of all detected abuse, with messages clearly related to betting activity because of the timing or content of the abuse.<\/p>\n
Boulter said she is getting ready for the level of abuse to increase when she plays at Wimbledon, her home Grand Slam. The grass-court tournament starts June 30.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Boulter, who is 28-year-old and ranked No 39 in the WTA, said she believes many of the abusive…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":191237,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4317],"tags":[105,6686,218,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-191236","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mental-health","8":"tag-health","9":"tag-latest-news-ticker","10":"tag-mental-health","11":"tag-uk","12":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114697824048954476","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/191236","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=191236"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/191236\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/191237"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=191236"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=191236"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=191236"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}