British tennis player Jodie Burrage has received death threats and a torrent of abuse on social media after losing her first main-draw singles match on the WTA Tour in 16 months.
Burrage shared a recording of a lengthy reel of abusive messages she received on Instagram following her 3-6, 6-3, 7-5 defeat to Vaishnavi Adkar in the round of 32 at the Chennai Open on Tuesday. Alongside the video, she wrote: “Nice welcome back to the tour. I remember why I left.”
Many of the abusive messages appeared to come from gamblers unhappy that the 27-year-old Burrage had lost.
A wider problem
World Tennis, the sport’s governing body, said in December 2024 that “angry gamblers” were responsible for 48% of the more than 12,000 social media posts from January to October that year that a monitoring service deemed abusive.
The WTA also addressed the issue in July this year. In a report into online abuse of players, the tour said that 89% of accounts responsible for serious abuse in 2024 did not reappear in 2025. It also secured the removal of 66% of serious abusive posts or comments and escalated 35 accounts to law enforcement.
Gauff speaks out
Last month, Coco Gauff said she received an “insane” amount of racist comments on social media following a controversial point in her match against home player Sun Xinran at the China Open.