Online Abuse of Athletes: Part One

Criticism has always been part of sport; missed chances, poor performances, and controversial decisions come with the territory. What has changed is the scale and persistence of the abuse athletes now face, largely due to the growth of online opportunities. Social media has transformed what was once limited to stadiums and newspapers into something constant, personal, and often anonymous. For many athletes, it never really switches off (the same argument as for young people suffering abuse at school). Simply, there are groups of people who cannot escape the vitriolic opinions of others, and athletes are in that group.

Online abuse is no longer confined to high-profile flashpoints. It is routine and increasingly normalised. Athletes

describe waves of insults, threats and harassment that appear within minutes of competition and continue long after. In many cases, the abuse spills beyond the athlete themselves and targets family members, partners and friends. The impact is not abstract. Athletes report anxiety, loss of confidence and changes in behaviour, including withdrawing from social media entirely, even when those platforms are central to building a career or securing sponsorship. Vivianne Miedema, the Netherlands all-time top goalscorer, has spoken out about the growing wave of abuse facing female players, highlighting how incidents of racist, misogynistic and sexually inappropriate harassment, including online targeting of teammates, are eroding the inclusive environment of the

women’s game. Miedema made an Instagram account that is void of any sport or anyone she knows, and it is just her interests outside of sport. This sort of action surely derails the very value of social media and serves to highlight the negative impact trolls have. In extreme cases, a complete withdrawal from the sport itself, as demonstrated by the tennis player Rebecca Marino. Holly Bradshaw, the British pole vaulter, has been very open about the fact that severe online abuse and body-shaming in the early years of her career left her scarred and led her to consider quitting the sport.

Although abuse affects athletes across all sports and levels, it does not affect everyone in the same way. Female athletes consistently face higher volumes of online abuse and are more likely to be targeted with sexist, misogynistic and sexualised messages. As women’s sport has grown in visibility and commercial value, the intensity of online harassment has grown. Research in the UK shows that female athletes face significantly higher levels of online abuse while often being protected by safeguarding frameworks that were never designed with their specific risks in mind. The result is a gap between the realities of women’s sport and the support structures that exist to protect those within it. Major global sporting events have begun to reveal just how widespread this problem has become. When the world’s biggest competitions take place, the scale of the abuse directed at athletes becomes even more visible, offering a clearer picture of how deeply embedded the issue now is within modern sport.

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The NPA recognise that this can affect players mentally and emotionally so they offer direct support from our Player Development Managers, Sarah Gandon and Gabby Marshall, who are both trained in Mental Health First Aid and can refer players to other NPA psychological services. 

You can also seek help from:

• Your netball club safeguarding officer

• Genevieve Gordon-Thomson, NPA Safeguarding Officer

• Dickon Turner, England Netball Lead Safeguarding Officer

Or, alternatively, if you would like to speak to someone outside of netball, then you can get

in contact with:

• The police

• Safeguarding Matters