British tennis player Jodie Burrage has received death threats and a torrent of abuse on social media after she was defeated in her first main-draw singles match on the WTA Tour in 16 months.
Burrage shared a recording of a lengthy reel of abusive messages she received on Instagram following a 3-6, 6-3, 7-5 loss to Vaishnavi Adkar in the round of 32 at the Chennai Open on Tuesday.
"Nice welcome back to the tour. I remember why I left," Burrage wrote.
Many of the abusive messages appeared to be from gamblers unhappy that the 27-year-old Burrage had lost.
World Tennis, the sport's governing body, said in December 2024 that "angry gamblers" were responsible for 48% of the more than 12,000 posts on social media platforms from January to October that year that were deemed abusive by a monitoring service.
In July this year, the WTA said in a report on online abuse of players that 89% of accounts responsible for serious abuse in 2024 did not reappear in 2025 and that it secured the removal of 66% of serious abusive posts or comments while escalating 35 accounts to law enforcement.
"Protecting players and the wider tennis family from online threats and abuse is a key priority for the WTA," a WTA spokesperson said in a statement to the Press Association. "We have WTA staff on the ground in Chennai offering Jodie support, along with our wider player welfare and Threat Matrix team."
Last month, Coco Gauff said she received an "insane" amount of racist comments on social media following a controversial point in a match against home player Sun Xinran at the China Open.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
