Ukrainian tennis star Evina Svitolina is the latest athlete to reveal she’s received online abuse from sports bettors.
Following her loss in straight sets to Naomi Osaka at the Montreal Open on Tuesday, the 30-year-old posted screenshots on her Instagram Story that show she received death threats from several users.
Several messages included support for Russia due to its ongoing war with Ukraine. There were also racial comments made about her husband, French men’s tennis player Gaël Monfils, who is Black.
“To all the bettors: I’m a mom before I’m an athlete. The way you talk to women — to mothers — is SHAMEFUL. If your moms saw your messages, they’d be disgusted,” Svitolina wrote on Instagram.
Svitolina posted eight Instagram Stories showing more than a dozen users sending abuse via direct messages or in the comments of her photos. Some users also accused the world No. 13 player of fixing her matches.
In June, the Women’s Tennis Association and International Tennis Federation published a report about online abuse based on full-year 2024 data. The report analyzed 1.6 million posts and comments and verified 8,000 that were deemed “abusive, violent, and threatening.”
There were 458 players that faced direct abuse or threat, with 40% of the detected abuse linked to “angry gamblers.” The report said that 15 of the accounts found to spew abuse were sent to law enforcement.
Svitolina is not the only player in tennis to publicly reveal she’s received hate speech online. British tennis player Katie Boulter said in June, around the time of the French Open, that she and her family had received death threats.
