For the first time in Wimbledon’s history, organisers have created a service to monitor abusive comments sent to players via social media.
The monitoring service was confirmed by tournament director Jamie Baker on Friday while he was speaking with the media. According to research conducted by the World Sports Network, Novak Djokovic, Stefanos Tsitsipas and Carlos Alcaraz all received a high level of negative comments on social media compared to their peers. On the women’s side, the top three were Aryna Sabalenka, Elena Rybakina and Caroline Garcia. Daria Kasatkina has previously described the issue as ‘out of control’ when speaking about her experiences on social media.
“This year is the first year that we have got effectively a social media monitoring service specifically for the event,” the AFP news agency quoted Baker as saying.
“This is not something that you’ll see in the public domain at all. You won’t see us shout about it but effectively we are scrolling social media for any of this type of content and it means that we can get information that we haven’t had in the past.
“We’re not just relying on what a player might be saying is happening to them but also if there is something that is of concern that’s when our security teams can basically kick in and actually help do something about it.”
Wimbledon’s new service can be used at the player’s disposal. However, they won’t pursue any incidents unless they have been asked to do so. This is not the first time such an initiative in tennis has occured. Last December a proactive monitoring service that aims to protect athletes from online abuse and threats was established by the ITF, WTA, AELTC and USTA.
“The benefit of having it is that we do have the ability to officially register what’s going on but we wouldn’t be taking any of those steps without actually engaging with the player and their teams and trying to get a feel for what’s going on,” Baker commented.
“This is the obviously the first time we’ve had it at our event but tennis is doing a lot more of this now so I think in generalfor the athletes it’s really positive that we’re taking this step.”
A study commissioned by the International Olympic Committee concluded that there has been a ‘considerable rise’ in online abuse against athletes in recent years.
