Judy Murray: Gamblers targeting tennis stars on social media
Young tennis stars are being sent death threats on social media by gamblers who have lost money betting on matches, Judy Murray has said.
The tennis coach and mother to Wimbledon champions Andy and Jamie said older players were often better equipped to handle the amount of “horrifying “and “destructive” abuse sent to them online.
Ms Murray, 64, speaking at the Cheltenham Literature Festival on Monday for her debut novel, The Wild Card, recounted her own difficulties protecting young female players while captain of Great Britain’s Fed Cup between 2011 and 2016.
She told audience members: “I think for youngsters it is part and parcel of educating them how to use it [social media], how to use it sensibly and it can be quite destructive.”
She added that “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”.
“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.”
It is estimated that around £40 billion is spent on tennis gambling worldwide each year. Roughly a quarter of that sum is wagered on the lowest level matches where prize money is no more than £1,600, according to an investigation by the Washington Post newspaper last month.
Young British tennis stars who have struggled with abuse on social media include Emma Raducanu, 20, the first female British tennis player to win a Grand Slams singles title since 1977.
She deleted Instagram and WhatsApp from her phone because of the online abuse she received following her exit from the Australian Open this year. At the time she had 2.5 million followers on Instagram and was the fifth most followed tennis player.
“I feel that it [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,” she told The Times newspaper.
Katie Boulter, 29, Britain’s No 1 female player, has said players receive abuse even when they have won a match.
“We get quite a lot of abuse on the days we win and on the days we lose. It’s something we all deal with and move on from quickly,” she said in the month before entering this year’s Wimbledon championship.
Marcus Willis, 33, who made his Wimbledon debut in 2016 and faced off against Roger Federer in the second round, suffered a torrent of insults from social media trolls about his weight during his grand-slam career.
The abuse became so vitriolic that in 2017, his mother Cathy Willis, a teaching assistant, resorted to leaping to his defence online. She told one troll: “Please tell me, what is your definition of a bully? Maybe it’s someone who launches unprovoked personal abuse at someone else?”
She told another: “I expect he finds your ridiculous insults slightly boring, he’s got far better things to do than engage with trolls”.
Ms Murray also disclosed how the media spotlight on her son Andy, as he was rising through the ranks, was the “hardest thing to deal with” other than the financial demands of the sport.
She said: “Andy, in the early days, came in for some enormous criticism from the media. Why doesn’t he get his haircut? Why doesn’t he shave? Why are his shorts too big? Why is his voice so boring? It was everything, and it is hard as a parent to be reading all these things.”
Ms Murray said the criticism “affected everybody”, and that while she was trying to stop the family from reading it, she was also trying to “get them to understand the only people that really matter are the people who know you, that is your friends and your family”.
