A comeback match that ended in threats
Jodie Burrage had not played a WTA Tour match since Wimbledon in 2025 when she lost 3-6 6-3 7-5 to India’s Vaishnavi Adkar in the first round at Chennai on Tuesday. The match itself was rough. In the heat she was visibly shaking, had her blood pressure and oxygen levels checked and had ice rubbed on her arms and legs before finishing the contest and dropping the last game to love.
Then the messages arrived. The 27-year-old posted a video of the abuse and death threats sent to her Instagram account, captioned with a line about remembering why she left the tour. Speaking to Sky Sports today, she said she was in the physio room replying to worried family at home when the abuse started landing on her phone.
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Betting anger and a call for ID
Burrage believes the worst of it comes from people who lose money on tennis. Some of the messages say so outright, demanding refunds or saying she should not have been bet on. The WTA’s own figures back up the pattern: its Threat Matrix programme counted more than 12,000 abusive posts and messages aimed at female players in 2025, and gamblers were behind 42 per cent of verified abuse and 59 per cent of serious abuse.
Her fix is simple. She wants social media accounts tied to a real identity, so people answer for what they send. She puts the responsibility on the platforms rather than on the WTA, though the tour has offered her a private channel for reporting abusive direct messages and moderation that hides comments before she sees them.
What the WTA says it will do
A WTA spokesperson said staff were on the ground in Chennai supporting her, and that Threat Matrix is reporting the messages to the platforms while investigations try to identify those responsible. Where betting is involved, offenders go onto the Bad Actor programme so operators can act against their accounts. A report in July said 66 per cent of serious abusive posts flagged by the programme were removed, and 35 accounts linked to 12 individuals were passed to law enforcement.
Burrage, ranked 474th and a former world No 85, says she is now building a pre-season block with Australia in January as the target.
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