ABUSE has always been a huge problem in sport, but with social media now so prominent in the sporting world, it can be hard to avoid seeing it all.
On Wednesday, it was all too much for darts player, Stephen Bunting.
‘The Bullet’ was defeated 3-1 in sets by Dutch player, Danny Noppert, and despite playing through back pain which hindered his performance, this loss prompted all sorts of vile slurs and derogatory terms hurled his way online.
A comment thrown towards Bunting on social media said “By losing you cost me money, I hate you.”
Another comment from the thousands he got said “Maybe you should shift a lot of weight to fix that back problem and then maybe you’ll play better.”
Bunting took to Facebook to display to the world all the hate he was getting. On that post he commented “Losing doesn’t deserve this much abuse, very sad to see.”
Most of the abuse stemmed from the people being annoyed that Bunting had ‘cost them money’ in sports betting. The connection between sports betting and abuse towards athletes in becoming concerningly obvious, with many studies and media outlets picking it up as a major issue.
One such study in the USA brought forward by the NCAA (National Collegiate Athletic Association) ran an experiment to find the most common versions of abuse.
In a story with ESPN, they found that 11% of 4,000 messages that were flagged in the study showed that it was sports betting-related abuse.
Sexual (20%) and Sexism (14%) still remained the most prominent forms of abuse, but in third was sports betting-related hate. This was twice as much as racial abuse and threats of violence.
In Tennis, the WTA (Women’s Tennis Association) and the ITF (International Tennis Federation) also found regular links between sports betting and abuse being directed towards players, coaches and officials.
2024 saw a season-wide report produced by the two sporting bodies of tennis, they found that:
- 40% of all detected abuse was sent by angry gamblers
- 12% of all the abuse were found to be from just ten accounts
- The most prolific account sent 263 messages of sports betting-related abuse
After finding out these stats, the WTA & ITF have urged the gambling industry to take more action to protect players, coaches, officials, and family members of the players.
As one of the more popular players in the game, this was very surprising to see. Bunting had built up an incredible fanbase and is still one of the most respected players in the sport. Everyone who has met him, or played with him, has said that he is known for his professionalism and friendliness on stage.
People in sport are human too, and sometimes watchers and fans forget that athletes, coaches, officials and other people involved in sport aren’t robots and will see the abuse, but just because they are famous, doesn’t mean it won’t affect them like you and me.
