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 a 3-6, 6-3, 7-5 loss 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.
Growing Concern Over Online Abuse
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.
In July, the WTA released a report on online abuse of players. It found that 89% of accounts responsible for serious abuse in 2024 did not reappear in 2025. The tour also secured the removal of 66% of serious abusive posts or comments and escalated 35 accounts to law enforcement.
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.