Tennis player shares threats sent to personal phone, WTA Tour says no breach of private data
TO women’s tennis player you may have criticized the WTA Tour‘s response to threats of violence sent to her personal cellphone. Panna Udvardy, the world No. 95, is the second WTA Tour player to talk about such threats prior to now week, which the tour has informed gamers aren’t the consequence of a personal data breach.
Udvardy, 27, acquired a message from a cellphone quantity with a United Kingdom nation code, instructing her to lose a match at a match one run beneath the principle tour.
The message, sent forward of her assembly with Ukraine’s Anhelina Kalinina in Antalya, Turkey, included a risk to kidnap her mom, in addition to saying that the individual answerable for the message had particulars of the place her mother and father and grandmother dwell.
The message was accompanied by images of Udvardy’s household, in addition to a photograph of a hand gun and the risk that “we have two groups near Hungary ready for war if necessary.”
“At midnight I’m panicking, I’m alone in the hotel. I was really scared, so I forwarded these messages to my parents,” Udvardy mentioned by way of voice message.
“I forwarded it also to the supervisor and the WTA player relations team. I wrote an email to the social media team at the WTA. I could not sleep for two hours.”
Udvardy mentioned that when she went to the WTA match supervisor’s workplace, she was informed that she was not the primary player to obtain these sorts of messages.
She mentioned that the supervisor informed her that there was an investigation right into a attainable leak of gamers’ personal data, which, the supervisor mentioned, defined the current prevalence of messages sent to gamers’ personal telephones.
“The WTA tried to downplay the situation a little bit. I didn’t see any extra security being placed or any kind of real concern,” Udvardy mentioned.
“The supervisor told me, ‘Oh, it happened to other players, so don’t worry.’
“OK, but I am worried — it’s my phone number, my personal data, who knows what else they have?”
Udvardy mentioned that the tour’s safeguarding crew had additionally informed her that the gun photograph was an outdated one, which implied that the individual sending the message didn’t really possess a firearm.
“I don’t see how that’s better,” she mentioned.
A supply briefed on the Antalya match’s operations, who spoke on the situation of anonymity as a result of they weren’t approved to communicate publicly, mentioned that the supervisor’s remark to Udvardy didn’t represent an official assertion and was made off the cuff.
In an e-mail sent to gamers following Udvardy’s reporting of the threats towards her which has been reviewed by TheAthleticthe group mentioned that there had not been an official WTA data breach, and mentioned that the FBI is contributing to an investigation into the provenance of the threatening messages.
It additionally instructed gamers to instantly contact the tour’s safeguarding crew within the occasion of receiving threatening messages, whether or not on personal telephones or social media.
The FBI has beforehand been concerned in investigations of threatening messages. In a 2024 season-wide report into abuse of gamers commissioned by the WTA Tour and World Tennis, 15 circumstances have been reported to regulation enforcement, and three of them to the FBI.
The tour makes use of Signify Group’s Threat Matrix service, which is designed to assist shield gamers on social media by detecting and filtering out abusive messages by means of a mixture of AI and human analysts.
Italian girls’s player Lucrezia Stefanini mentioned that she acquired comparable threats, together with a photograph of a gun, forward of a first-round loss in qualifying for the BNP Paribas Open at Indian Wells. Multiple ATP Tour gamers have additionally mentioned that they’ve acquired direct threats in current weeks.
“I immediately alerted the WTA, which provided me with more security… The entire tournament mobilized to make me feel safe,” Stefanini mentioned in a video message posted to social media.
Udvardy finally misplaced her match, in two tight units, saying that she was proud of herself for creating probabilities to win throughout such a worrying state of affairs. After it, she mentioned, “the supervisor, the tournament director, and three police officers came up to me.
“They said that the Hungarian consulate sent them, because my parents wrote an email to the Hungarian embassy informing them about this, and they wanted to make sure everyone was safe.”
“They sent out people to watch my match and to watch me… They also offered me a security person at all times while I’m still here in Antalya.”
Tennis players on both tours have become accustomed to receiving abuse and harassment on social mediamost prevalently from bettors who’ve misplaced cash on their matches. Former WTA Tour Finals champion Caroline Garcia, who retired from tennis in 2025, mentioned she rejected a $270,000 sponsorship betting for the player podcast that she hosts consequently of her experiences with bettor abuse throughout her profession.
The WTA and ATP excursions each have data partnerships with organizations that serve sports activities books and betting corporations, mostly by transmitting match data. Stats Perform in 2023 extends its partnership with the ladies’s tour to 2030.
“They’re always on Instagram, usually fake profiles, you can see it’s a very emotional response,” Udvardy mentioned of abuse she has acquired on social media. “They lost their money and they’re just trying to hurt you in that way, by calling your names.”
She then described the extra concern and stress brought on by receiving such messages in private, including that this was the primary time she had acquired a risk on her personal cellphone.
“Are we waiting for something to happen to put more safety measures for the players, or worry? I don’t think this should be the case,” she mentioned.
“This should not be normalized.”
