Too many female athletes are forced to armour themselves daily against attacks – the solution is to financially empower them
No athlete should open their phone to find death threats aimed at her and her family. Yet this is the reality for many sportswomen, including Katie Boulter, Britain’s second-ranked female tennis player. She revealed following her French Open first-round win that she has received messages saying, “I hope you get cancer”, “go to hell”, and even to “buy candles and a coffin for your entire family”. One also threatened to damage her grandmother’s grave.
On the day Boulter spoke of the extent of abuse she receives, the All England Club said it had to block an attempt by Emma Raducanu’s stalker to buy tickets to Wimbledon. The British No 1 broke down in tears on court in February, having spotted her stalker in the crowd.
The messages these women receive online veer from dismissive to aggressively dehumanising. The threat of violence is real and has to be taken seriously.
Of course male athletes receive abuse too, although research by Signify, a company that uses AI to detect abuse on social media, found female players and match officials are 30% more likely to experience abuse than their male counterparts.
World Rugby identified 2,589 abusive messages aimed at players or match officials
But more sportswomen are caught in a depressing catch-22 – they could abandon their social media accounts to protect their wellbeing but then they cannot earn enough to play their sport and pay their bills. For many, a lively online profile is the only way they can win commercial deals and financial stability. To thrive in underfunded women’s sports ecosystem, female athletes must become their own promoters, marketers and brand ambassadors, even if that means they become lightning rods for deeply personal abuse.
This dark undercurrent persists as we enter what has been heralded as the summer of women’s sport, with football’s Lionesses starting their Euros title defence next month and England hosting the Women’s Rugby World Cup in August.
During this spring’s Women’s Six Nations, Welsh player Jaz Joyce‑Butchers described the aftermath of posting a seemingly innocuous TikTok dance as a “crazy” flood of body‑shaming, skill‑undermining and hateful messages. She said stepping away from social media was tempting, but without it, sponsorship dries up. Attention disappears. The system forgets you.
The effect abuse has on athletes cannot be overstated. Players describe anxiety, depression, spikes in eating or sleeping disorders, and a sense of isolation. The psychological toll is real, and often invisible. The fear of speaking up about the abuse makes players fear they will lose brand deals.
An analysis of the Lionesses’ 2023 World Cup found abusive messages spiked during and immediately after matches, with terms such as “shame,” “kill” and “stupid” used hundreds of times. When Lauren James received a red card against Nigeria, more than 1,100 abusive messages flooded her inbox in less than 48 hours.
Alessia Russo, the England forward, said on Tuesday: “At my first Euros I was on social media and I would have a look, have a scroll, and I got caught in a trap sometimes. Going into the World Cup, I completely came off everything and I had people to run my Instagram.” That in itself is a privilege only recently available to women’s football players. Most top-level sportswomen do not have the choice to come off social media or people to run their accounts for them. Women’s sport owes a great deal of its growth to social media. Ilona Maher, the Team USA rugby player, has become the world’s most followed rugby player thanks to her social media videos and has amassed a fortune in brand deals as a result. The cost, she says, is “constant abuse”.
In a former job, as editor of Contested, I managed commercial deals for female athletes and saw firsthand how the metric that brands test athletes by isn’t their career success – it’s their follower count. Those tended to be the brands we didn't work with. Platforms such as Instagram and TikTok serve as direct-to-audience channels where players can build personal brands and attract sponsors. This is particularly acute in sports like women’s rugby, where even the top players earn a fraction of their male counterparts and have to monetise every avenue available to them. Engagement rates and content output are the most important performance indicators in endorsement deals.
Ending the abuse means greater monitoring and prosecutions, a complex feat when so many abusers hide behind anonymous accounts. Some governing bodies are taking proactive steps to protect players. World Rugby partnered with Signify before the 2023 Men’s Rugby World Cup and has extended the platform to cover all players, their friends and family, coaches and officials at this year’s Rugby World Cup. Since working with Signify, World Rugby has identified 2,589 abusive messages aimed at players or match officials, 11 of which were reported to the police resulting in nine prosecutions or warnings, a few of which were to children.
When athletes are forced to armour themselves against abuse just to earn enough money to do their jobs, sport loses humanity. Until more governing bodies and brands address the financial inequity in women’s sport, social media will remain both a stage and a battlefield. Sports leaders have a duty to ensure the next generation of sportswomen can step into the spotlight without fear of being burned.
Photograph by Shaun Brooks/CameraSport/Getty
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