According to Judy Murray, online gamblers who have lost money betting on matches are sending death threats to young tennis stars.
The mother of Wimbledon champion Andy Murray and a tennis coach said older players were frequently better able to handle the volume of horrific and damaging hatred directed at them online.
Murray discussed this issue in a literature festival on Monday and said: “I think for youngsters it is part and parcel of educating them how to use social media, how to use it sensibly and it can be quite destructive. One or two of the girls that were on our team had a real problem with it because a lot of people gamble on tennis and when they lose money they react.”
She added: “And if you are one of the players who has lost a bet for them by losing a match, the death threats, the abuse that comes through that it is horrifying. And as an older person, I know it is horrifying but I can handle it better than someone who is in their late teens, early 20s, because that is frightening.”
Emma Raducanu was one of the young British tennis stars who struggled with abuse on social media. She deleted Instagram and WhatsApp from her phone as a result of the abuse she received online after she was eliminated from the Australian Open this year. At the time, she had 2.5 million Instagram followers and was the fifth most followed tennis player.
Raducanu expressed her thoughts during a conversation and said: “I feel that social media affects you, but I’ve just learned regardless of what you do, if you do good, if you do bad, people are going to come at you regardless.”
Around £40 billion is believed to be spent on tennis gambling annually throughout the world. According to a Washington Post newspaper investigation from last month, about a quarter of that amount is a bet on the lowest-level games with prize money of no more than £1,600.
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Emma Raducanu in 2023
WWWLWWLLWW Now ranked no.282, Emma played her last match on the 18th of April when she surrendered to world no.13 Jelena Ostapenko 6-2 6-1 in the 1st round in Stuttgart (draw).
This season the Brit has managed to achieve a compiled 5-5 match record.
