After a shock first-round exit at the US Open in 2024, Felix Auger-Aliassime received a death threat from someone who lost money betting on the outcome of the Canadian’s match.
“It was quite serious,” Auger-Aliassime recalled. “I had to stay at my hotel until they found out, eventually, the guy wasn't in New York.”
Mirra Andreeva was 14 years old when she received a message online from a bettor threatening her physical harm.
“I was playing one of my first ITF tournaments and I received a message after my loss that said, ‘Look around, because I'm going to find you and I'm going to cut your arms’,” Andreeva told reporters in Dubai last year. “That was still the one that I remember until today. I guess everyone, every player receives a lot of hateful messages.”
Sloane Stephens once shared that she received over 2,000 messages following a US Open third-round loss – one of which read: “I promise to find you and destroy your leg so hard that you can't walk any more.”
As Andreeva noted, every single player on tour receives hateful and violent messages after their matches. With tennis betting continuously growing, so are the number of toxic comments directed at players, ranging from calling them names, threatening them with physical harm, wishing illness on their parents and families, to countless more disturbing messages.
Threats of violence and scourge of fixing
Such behaviour is particularly prevalent among people betting on the lower tiers of tennis – something that took Lebanese player Benjamin Hassan by surprise when he started competing on the professional circuit.
“In the beginning, it was tough because I didn't know what was going on,” Hassan said.
He remembers receiving a phone call after one of his losses, threatening to kill him, and warning that the unknown caller knew his whereabouts.
“I called back, but they didn't answer. I went to the next tournament and asked a good friend of mine, Dustin Brown. He said, ‘Yeah, yeah, that's normal. Ignore it, block it, or keep it, or tell the ITF or ATP’. Now we're used to it,” said the 31-year-old.
Violent messages don’t just come from bettors who have lost money on a match; they can also come from fixers trying to manipulate the outcome of a future match.
Last month at Indian Wells, Italian player Lucrezia Stefanini said she received a WhatsApp message “in which I was threatened over winning yesterday’s match. They threatened me and my family and named my parents, the place where I was born and they sent me a photo of a gun.”
Stefanini immediately alerted the WTA, who supported her by providing extra security during her match, which the Italian lost in three sets.
“I don’t think it’s right to put me under this pressure and unease before a match,” Stefanini said in a video she posted on Instagram.
Her compatriot Mattia Bellucci and Hungarian Panna Udvardy were also subjected to similar threats.
Whether it’s hate messages from bettors or threats from match-fixers, opening up tennis to the gambling industry has posed serious concerns for the players.
Former world No 2 Paula Badosa told The National earlier this year she felt “scared” when she initially received such comments online, and that she worries about the younger players on tour.
She said: “It worries me for them because you take it very personal and you go on court and you have these messages in your head, maybe I'm not worth it or maybe my family [is in danger], [receiving messages saying] ‘I hope they die’ and all this kind of stuff and you feel like all this responsibility on your shoulders. It's unnecessary.”
An industry worth billions
The size of the global sports betting market was estimated to be around $101 billion in 2024, according to multiple research platforms, and it is projected to grow close to $190 billion by 2030.
Within that sports betting pie, the leading segment over the past two years has been live/in-play betting, which allows participants to place wagers during a game or match.
The interactive nature of live betting maximises fan engagement. Tennis – alongside football – happens to be one of the best sports to utilise mid-match wagering.
With thousands of men’s and women’s matches taking place all year across different tiers, from the lowly ITF tournaments all the way up to the grand slams, and the fluctuating nature of a tennis match due to the unique scoring system that allows for sudden momentum shifts, the sport is perfectly set up for in-play betting. It is that form of betting that is raising the most concerns among public health experts for its addictive nature.
Tennis all in on betting partnerships
Tennis’ ties to the industry have been growing since the International Tennis Federation (ITF) signed a data rights deal with Sportradar back in 2012.
By becoming the official data partner of the ITF, Sportradar have the right to collect, license and distribute live tennis data and streaming from ITF tournaments to betting companies.
In 2016, the Australian Open debuted its sponsorship deal with UK bookmaker William Hill, and displayed its logo on interactive screens across its grounds.
The move coincided with news of a match-fixing scandal that broke during that fortnight in Melbourne, prompting former world No 1 Andy Murray to describe having a grand slam sponsored by a bookmaker as “hypocritical”.
“I'm not really pro that,” Murray said at the time. “I think it's a little bit hypocritical. Because I don't believe the players are allowed to be sponsored by betting companies, but the tournaments are. I think it's a bit strange.”
Such was the backlash and controversy surrounding that deal, that a year later the Australian Open axed the William Hill logo from their on-site advertising.
Since then, attitudes towards betting in tennis have changed significantly. The ITF, ATP, WTA, multiple tournaments, as well as official broadcast rights holders, have all signed deals with betting entities. With the opportunity to make millions in revenue, and with sports betting made legal in the United States in 2018, tennis organisations could no longer ignore the lure of the gambling world, irrespective of the toxicity that comes with it.
In December 2023, Sportradar and Tennis Data Innovations (TDI), a specialist joint venture vehicle of ATP and ATP Media, entered into a multiyear agreement providing the sports technology company with global data and streaming rights for betting.
In 2021, the WTA signed a deal with US sportsbook FanDuel and renewed the multiyear partnership in 2023.
Just last week, the Betway logo was visible on the clay courts of the Barcelona Open as one of the ATP 500 tournament’s official sponsors. In February, Betsson was unveiled as the official sports betting partner of the Davis Cup, which is run by the ITF.
Many of these partnerships promote a premise that signing official deals help protect the integrity of the sport.
An ATP spokesperson told The National: “ATP recognises the complexity of this issue. Betting has long been part of the global sports landscape, and sports carry certain risks associated with that activity. It is well established across the sports ecosystem that official partnerships in this space provide the best structure for robust protection measures around integrity, transparency and oversight.
“These relationships also generate important commercial value for the sport, enabling it to invest in monitoring betting markets, identifying suspicious activity, and safeguarding the integrity of competition. Removing such frameworks would not eliminate betting activity or the risk of abuse, but rather reduce the sport’s ability to monitor and respond effectively.”
Players want piece of the action
So, how do the players feel about the tours and tournaments striking such deals? The response has been decidedly mixed.
Last month, Naomi Osaka said she doesn’t see any positives to sports gambling “especially when people don't treat the athletes as human”. Badosa wishes there was no betting in tennis and notes how the individual nature of the sport separates it from team sports like football and basketball that are popular with gamblers.
“I understand the betting and look, there's a lot of sports that do it, but at the end of the day, tennis is different because it's an individual sport,” said the Spaniard.
“It's very mental and the player can read [threatening messages] and then they have to go alone on court. So if I could choose, of course not [have betting in tennis].”
Auger-Aliassime said “it would be open for debate” if tournaments and tennis organisations should strike deals with betting companies. “But I don't know if that's a problem,” added the Canadian. “There's money in betting. People will bet anyway. I don't personally bet. But even if I wasn't a player, like that's not something I believe in. I don't go to the casino. I don't gamble at all. But it's the freedom to bet. If the people want to watch tennis and bet, it's up to them."
Andrey Rublev is not against tournaments having betting partners as long as the revenue from such deals are funnelled into prize money, better facilities and other improvements.
The ATP said it does not disclose confidential financial terms, but that “revenues generated through ATP’s data agreements are shared equally between players and tournaments, and reinvested into the sport, including prize money, as well as player benefit programmes such as the ATP Player Pension.”
Jessica Pegula understands the mass appeal of betting and says sports gambling “is a big part of American culture”.
“We've had this discussion with other players before … you see these betting sponsors come in, but we're the ones taking the abuse, whether you win or lose, it just depends on who they're betting on,” the world No 5 told The National.
“And we're playing like every week. So it's every single week that we have to monitor that. And I know the tours have set up some process to filter out those comments, but it's not quite foolproof, so I think that's still an issue. I unfortunately don't think it's something that's going to go away. So I think we just need to find some sort of balance with it, where the players feel like they're getting something out of it.”
Inadequate solutions
The tours have indeed been trying to take some measures to help protect the players from online abuse, but as Pegula mentioned, the tools are fallible.
In July 2024, the ATP announced it was teaming up with TDI and Sportradar to launch Safe Sport, a new service integrating AI moderation, education and investigation into a single tool to protect athletes from online abuse.
Separately, the ITF, WTA, All England Club and the USTA began using a service called Threat Matrix from the start of 2024 to help protect players and family members from targeted online hate.
“All players competing in The Championships, US Open, WTA Tour and ITF World Tennis Tour events are automatically covered by the service,” an ITF spokesperson said in a statement sent to The National.
“Making the online space safer is a responsibility for everyone, including social media platforms. We will continue to play our part by using the latest technology to guard against the scourge of online abuse.”
Despite the efforts made by the tours and other governing bodies, players still receive abusive messages every single day. In-play/live betting in a sport like tennis is fuelling unhealthy gambling habits, while the threat of match-fixing continues to plague the sport.
Tennis is now firmly on the sports betting bandwagon, but just like attitudes have changed towards tennis gambling over the past decade, could another shift in momentum happen? Only time will tell if the sport comes to regret its decision to go all in on the betting industry.
