For several years, tennis players have been the target of insults and threats on social networks from individuals including hateful bettors, a phenomenon that the authorities are not stopping and which is now taking place in the stands. .
This evil which is increasingly plaguing tennis is no longer limited to the anonymity of screens. In the middle of a match, Tuesday, during the Open Sud de France in Montpellier, Benoit Paire responded to a spectator who was insulting him. The dialogue, captured by the cameras, is eloquent.
“What, after the match? Who do you think you are to talk to me like that?” belches the player, known for his sometimes borderline behavior on the courts, but whose irritation seems justified.
In a press conference after the match, the French player said that the man had threatened him: “He told me: ‘I’ll wait for you at the end.’ When they told me that… I saw that he was betting and people like that have nothing to do in a stadium. The spectator in question was expelled from the stands.
“It’s a wound,” continued Benoit Paire. But we are professional players and we know that people bet. When people attack us on social networks, we try to ignore it. But when it’s in the stands and someone threatens us, I don’t find it terrible.”
“A wound”
This is perhaps not the first time that a threat of this kind has been made by a spectator on a court. But this time the scene was filmed, giving substance to this wound that the tennis authorities are proving incapable of stopping.
Players have been regularly denouncing these hate messages received on their social networks for around ten years. But awareness seems to be slow in coming.
As early as 2016, the African-American Madison Keys, at the time 9th player in the world, relayed on her Instagram account the flood of racist insults she received. An approach subsequently imitated by many players. Frenchman Gaël Monfils did it in 2020, sharing insulting messages towards him on an Instagram story, just like Caroline Garcia a few days later.
“Dirty p***, I hope your mother abandoned you when you were born, go die”, could we read on a message received by the best French player, revealed in a documentary on the L channel Team in June 2022.
Two months earlier, Benoit Paire had published some of these hateful messages received via Twitter, now X: “Please die”, “We are going to kill you” (“te vamos a matar “), “Fat idiot, stop playing tennis and go dancing”.
The authorities that govern world tennis have not remained completely inert in the face of the scale of the phenomenon. The ATP and WTA are working with risk assessment and management company Theseus to enable players to report their harassers, which can then be forwarded to law enforcement. But nothing has managed to stop the torrents of insults poured out every week.
“Derivative”
“In the end, few players take this step, probably out of weariness. And then some are less affected than others,” a source close to the French Tennis Federation explained to AFP.
In April 2023, the FFT announced that it would offer players participating in Roland-Garros the opportunity to use the +BodyGuard+ application, which allows them to block “derogatory” comments on their social networks.
“There is no place for any form of violence in our tournament,” explained the general director of the FFT, Caroline Flaissier.
Online hatred doesn’t just affect tennis.
Six months before the Paris Olympics, an Arcom study presented on January 23 revealed that half of sports fans active on social networks have already targeted an athlete with negative messages, including insults.
This “drift (…) could destroy the desire to play sport,” reacted the president of the organizing committee for the Paris Olympics (July 26 – August 11), Tony Estanguet.
Another study, carried out on a global scale, this one under the aegis of the NGO United against Online Abuse (UAOA) and published Thursday, gave the opportunity, to some of the most major international sports federations, including Fifa (football), the IOC (Olympism) and the ITF (tennis), having responded to the questionnaire, to sound the alarm.
“Nearly 90% of respondents strongly or somewhat agree that online attacks can potentially cause athletes to abandon their careers,” said the press release presenting the results of the study.
2024-02-01 18:35:59
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