Earlier this month, the French newspaper Le Monde ran a headline that stopped the sports world in its tracks: “Decapitated bodies, death threats… that’s our daily life.”
You wouldn’t be blamed for thinking this was a report from a war zone or a crime blotter. But it wasn’t. It was a collection of testimonies from professional tennis players describing the inbox of their Instagram and X accounts after a match. For the athletes who travel the world chasing yellow balls, this is the new normal: a daily barrage of graphic violence, racism, and harassment delivered directly to their pockets.
And the culprit is the global gambling industry.
Tennis has become the second most-bet-on sport in the world. Its structure of individual matchups, point-by-point scoring, and a nearly endless calendar of events across every time zone makes it perfect for high-frequency, in-play betting.
As betting has exploded, so too has the vitriol of those on the wrong side of wagers. When a gambler loses $50 on a dropped service game, they find the player on social media and tell them exactly how they should die.
The governing bodies of tennis have filled their coffers on the revenue streams of betting sponsorships, but a breaking point has now been reached. It’s time that tennis tackles the monster it has created.
The Mechanism of Hate
To understand the abuse players are receiving, you have to understand the bettor. For the angry gambler, a tennis player is a financial asset that failed to perform.
In team sports, a lost bet is often blamed on the team, the coach, or the referee. In tennis, the blame is singular. If a player double-faults on break point, they are solely responsible for the gambler’s loss (in their eyes). This direct line of accountability, combined with the anonymity of the internet, has created the perfect storm for the abuse we’ve been seeing in recent years.
Just to be clear, this abuse is about as bad as it gets. Visceral and violent. Players report receiving images of coffins, threats against their children, and graphic descriptions of torture. The Le Monde expose highlighted the gruesome imagery of decapitated bodies, clearly used by those making threats to shock and terrify athletes. Remember these athletes are people, usually in their 20s, who are often alone in hotel rooms, thousands of miles from home.
British No 1 Katie Boulter recently shed light on this reality, sharing a message she received that told her to buy “candles and a coffin for your entire family.” For Boulter, there was a clear link: the abuse spiked immediately after matches, and more importantly, it happened regardless of whether she won or lost. It was driven by the micro-betting markets where gamblers wager on specific sets or games.
“You really don’t know if this person is on site,” Boulter said of the fear that many players live with. “You really don’t know if they’re nearby or if they know where you live.”
Caroline Garcia: Choosing Values Over Cash
One bright spot amid all of this is the actions of recently retired French player Caroline Garcia, which news of broke this month as well.
Recently, Garcia revealed that she had turned down a lucrative sponsorship offer for her podcast, Tennis Insider Club. The deal was worth $270,000—a life-changing sum for many, and a significant payday even for a top pro. The sponsor? A major betting company.
“It wasn’t an easy ‘no,’ especially right after retiring from tennis,” Garcia wrote. “But we want to build a platform where players feel completely safe to be honest, vulnerable and open about anything, without pressure or distraction.”
Garcia, who reached a career-high ranking of No 4 in the world, has been one of the most vocal critics of the relationship between tennis and gambling. Following a loss at the US Open, she opened up about the toll the abuse takes, saying that betting has become “one of the biggest sources of pressure, abuse and hate in modern sport.”
The Frenchwoman’s stance highlights the hypocrisy at the heart of professional tennis. Tournaments aggressively court betting sponsorships, plastering logos on courtside banners and integrating live odds into broadcasts. Yet, the players—the very product being sold—are left to absorb the consequences of this.
“I do not want Tennis Insider Club to contribute, even indirectly, to a system that fuels addiction, destroys lives and turns athletes into daily targets,” Garcia stated. “Taking betting money would move us in the opposite direction.”
The Data: What the Threat Matrix Revealed
For years, player complaints were dismissed as anecdotal, simply seen as the cost of doing business in the public eye. But in 2024 and 2025, the governing bodies of tennis finally quantified the problem.
They partnered with Signify Group to launch Threat Matrix, an AI-powered service designed to monitor, flag, and report abusive content across social media platforms. The findings from the first season-wide report were about as damning as it gets.
In a single year, the system analyzed more than 1.6 million posts and comments directed at tennis players. Of those, close to 8,000 were verified as abusive, violent, or threatening.
The data confirmed what players like Garcia and Boulter had suspected for years:
- 40% to 48% of all detected abuse originated from “angry gamblers.”
- This figure rose to 77% when analyzing abuse sent via direct messages—the most personal and intrusive form of harassment.
- A small group of “prolific” abusers were responsible for a disproportionate amount of the hate, with one individual account sending over 260 abusive messages alone.
The Engine of Abuse: Micro-Betting
While general match betting contributes to the problem, the real cause of this abuse is the rise of micro-betting. This form of wagering allows gamblers to bet on the outcome of the next point, the next game, or even the speed of the next serve.
The “Crack Cocaine” of Gambling
Andy Roddick, former world No 1 and host of the podcast Served, has been a fierce critic of this model. In discussions with journalist Jon Wertheim, Roddick has likened micro-betting to the “crack cocaine” of sports gambling. The feedback loop is instantaneous. You place a bet on the next point, the point happens 10 seconds later, and you either win or lose.
When that result goes against the gambler—perhaps because a player missed an easy volley or hit a double fault—the rage is also immediate, and explosive. Unlike a match bet, where the gambler has to wait hours for the result (allowing time to cool off), micro-betting induces a far more rapid-fire emotional state. It’s this state that leads to impulsive, abusive behavior online, which athletes bear the brunt of.
Integrity Issues
Jon Wertheim, a senior writer for Sports Illustrated, has pointed out that micro-betting also poses a threat to the integrity of the sport. “It’s one thing to ask a player to tank a match—that’s hard to hide,” Wertheim said on the Served podcast last month. “But asking a player to double-fault the third point of the second game in the second set? That’s invisible. And that’s what micro-markets incentivize.”
These markets are nearly impossible to police. Afterall, a player can legitimately miss a serve, so proving they missed it on purpose in order to cash someone’s bet is a big ask.
The Data Rights Dilemma
This puts the ATP and WTA in a difficult position. Both tours have signed massive, multi-year data rights deals with companies like Sportradar. These deals are specifically designed to feed gamblers’ appetites for live, point-by-point betting data. The tours employ “data scouts” (chair umpires or dedicated personnel) who input the result of every point instantly. That data is sold to bookmakers, who use it to set micro-market odds.
By selling this data, the tours are profiting from the very mechanism that endangers their athletes. They are selling the fuel for the fire, the same fire they are trying to extinguish with the Threat Matrix.
The Precedent for Banning Micro-Bets
Tennis is not alone in facing this crisis of abuse, but other sports are acting faster. There is a growing consensus among regulators and leagues that micro-betting offers too little value to the fan experience, when compared to the massive risk that it poses to athlete safety.
The NFL’s Hard Line
The NFL, acknowledging this risk to player safety and game integrity, has recently taken a hard line. In a memo released this month, the league explicitly prohibited prop bets that are “determinable by one person in one play.”
This effectively bans micro-betting on individual actions, such as whether a quarterback’s first pass will be complete or incomplete, or whether a kicker will miss a field goal. The NFL decided that the revenue from these specific markets was not worth the cost to the shield.
The NCAA and College Sports
Similarly, the NCAA has lobbied states to ban player-specific prop bets entirely for college athletes. Charlie Baker, the NCAA President, cited a direct correlation between these markets and the volume of harassment student-athletes receive. Several states, including Ohio and Maryland, have complied, removing these markets from sportsbooks entirely.
Why is Tennis Lagging?
If the NFL—the richest sports league in the world—has determined that micro-betting is too dangerous, why hasn’t tennis followed suit?
The answer, as Wertheim and Roddick touched on, is likely structural. Tennis relies on betting revenue far more than the NFL does. For the NFL, betting is a side dish to the main course of TV rights. For professional tennis, particularly at the lower levels (Challenger and ITF tours), betting data rights are often the main course.
As Wertheim pointed out, “The data rights deals are structured around volume. If you cut out the micro-bets, you cut out the volume, and you cut out the revenue. Are the tours willing to take a pay cut to save their players’ mental health?”
So far, the answer appears to be no.
The Human Cost
The impact of this abuse goes far beyond a ruined evening, fundamentally altering how players interact with the world and their sport.
Top-10 stalwart Jessica Pegula, who is also a member of the WTA Players’ Council, welcomed the Threat Matrix initiative but in the same breath, said that identification isn’t enough. “It’s time for the gambling industry and social media companies to tackle the problem at its source,” she said.
For younger players, the effects can be debilitating. Entering the professional tour is stressful enough without a chorus of strangers wishing for your death because they lost a $10 parlay. Mental health struggles are rampant on tour, and this constant fear only exacerbates matters.
Even the men’s tour, often perceived as less vulnerable, is not immune. Taylor Fritz has spoken about the “disgusting” messages he receives, saying that gambling has become a gateway for people to dehumanize athletes. He too has faced threats after withdrawing from matches due to injury.
Daria Kasatkina, another vocal critic, shared screenshots of her DMs earlier this year to expose the reality. The messages are go beyond being insults – they demand refunds, detail suicide instructions, make threats against family members.
Where Does That Leave Us?
Headlines about “decapitated bodies” and “coffins” are not hyperbole. They are the daily reality for the young men and women who entertain us in the world of tennis.
Tools like Threat Matrix are a step forward, but ultimately they are a reactive measure. The solution lies in structural change. Following the lead of the NFL and eliminating micro-betting markets would be a decisive step towards reducing the vitriol from gamblers.
It would signal that the sport values its athletes more than the revenue generated by someone betting on a double fault.
Caroline Garcia’s $270,000 refusal is an encouraging start. It suggests that for some, the safety of the human beings on the court are worth more than the check from the sportsbook.
But until the sport’s governing bodies are willing to make similarly difficult financial choices, the inbox of the average tennis pro will remain a very dark place to be.