Jodie Burrage’s first WTA Tour singles match in 16 months ended in a three-set defeat at the Chennai Open. Afterwards she received death threats and abuse on social media. The 27-year-old Briton, now ranked 474th in the world, lost 3-6 6-3 7-5 in the first round to India’s Vaishnavi Adkar. Within hours she had posted a video to her Instagram story showing a stream of abusive direct messages.
“Nice welcome back to tour. I remember why I left,” wrote Burrage, the British number 15.
Germany’s Eva Lys was among the players who backed her quickly. Lys tagged the WTA in an Instagram post and asked: “When will something be done?”
A comeback soured
Burrage’s last main-draw singles match at tour level was in July 2025, when she lost to Catherine McNally in the first round at Wimbledon. Her trip to Chennai was meant to be a step back towards the level she reached two years earlier. In September 2023 she climbed to a career-high ranking of 85th.
For a long time the match went her way. She took the opening set 6-3, and according to reports from Chennai she led 5-3 in the decider. Adkar then won the next four games to close out the match, which lasted two hours and 47 minutes. Burrage also appeared to struggle in the humid conditions and needed medical attention in the closing stages.
A defeat like that would be hard enough after more than a year away from the tour. The messages that followed made it worse. Burrage did not say who sent them, but she shared enough of them to show how serious they were.
She has spoken about this before. After Wimbledon in 2025 she said trolls had targeted her and she had stopped checking her phone. She has argued for linking social media accounts to verified identities. “I think it’s very simple to have someone’s ID connected to their account and that would, I think, quickly stop what people write and make them more accountable,” she said.
A problem the sport has not solved
The abuse Burrage received fits a pattern in women’s tennis. A report by data science company Signify Group, published earlier this year, found more than 12,000 abusive posts and messages aimed at female players in 2025. That was about the same as in 2024, so the problem did not shrink despite the monitoring and reporting work done by the WTA and the International Tennis Federation.
The same research points to where much of the abuse comes from:
- Gamblers were responsible for 42% of verified abuse in 2025.
- They accounted for 59% of the abuse classed as serious, which includes threats of violence and death.
- Two years earlier, gamblers were behind 48% of abusive posts.
A joint WTA and ITF report found that 458 players were directly targeted by abuse in 2024. Matches in the early rounds of WTA 250 events and on the lower tiers are often available on betting markets, so lower-ranked players like Burrage can receive as much abuse as the stars. Unlike the stars, they rarely have the support staff or media profile to deal with it.
Burrage is not the first British player to say this publicly. Katie Boulter, who beat Burrage in the all-British final in Nottingham in 2023, told BBC Sport in 2025 that she had received death threats. She described how unsettling it was not to know where the senders were. “You really don’t know if this person is on site. You really don’t know if they’re nearby or if they know where you live or anything like that,” Boulter said.
What happens next
The WTA’s player board has previously called online abuse “unacceptable” and said its impact on players can be “significant”. The tour has not yet commented on Burrage’s case. Lys’s public challenge suggests some players think statements of condemnation are no longer enough.
The governing bodies already run monitoring services that flag abusive accounts and pass the most serious threats to the social media platforms and, in some cases, to law enforcement. The Signify figures show the overall volume has not fallen. Players are increasingly asking for tougher measures, such as the identity verification Burrage has called for, or closer cooperation with betting operators to identify account holders who send threats after losing money.
For Burrage, the immediate question is whether the experience changes her plans. Her post, “I remember why I left”, suggests the abuse played a part in her time away from the tour, though she has not said so directly. At 474th she has to play a full schedule to rebuild her ranking, and most of that will be at events where matches are livestreamed and available to bet on.
Her performance in Chennai, where she was two games from victory, shows she can still compete at WTA level. Whether she wants to keep doing so under this kind of pressure is a decision for her. For the second time in two seasons, a British player has had to explain publicly that losing a tennis match led to threats against her life.
Sports journalist and editor at SportsPortal.net. Covers cricket, football, Formula 1, tennis, and basketball with a focus on how global sports connect with Pakistani audiences. Follows the PSL, Pakistan national cricket team, Premier League, and major international tournaments. Has reported on sports for digital audiences since 2021.
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