Online abuse is not a new phenomenon in sport — but its scale, intensity and impact are increasing with every major sporting event.
For athletes across all levels, from emerging talent to elite professionals, digital spaces that should enable connection, opportunity and visibility are increasingly becoming sources of harm.
As one athlete put it: “There is no textbook for how to live your life on social media as an athlete.”
This reality presents a growing safeguarding challenge for sport — one that cannot be ignored, normalised or left solely to individuals to manage alone.
A growing and largely hidden safeguarding risk
Online abuse in sport takes many forms. It can include abusive or discriminatory comments, sexual harassment, threats of violence, stalking, doxxing, image-based abuse, impersonation and coordinated pile-on attacks. When these behaviours intersect with protected characteristics such as gender, race, disability or sexuality, the harm is often intensified.
While the full scale of online abuse is difficult to measure, available evidence paints a stark picture. During the Paris 2024 Olympic Games, over 10,000 posts and comments were verified as potentially abusive through AI-supported monitoring. At the 2022 FIFA World Cup, nearly 20,000 abusive or threatening posts were identified. Similar trends are emerging across esports, where real-time chat and parasocial relationships can further exacerbate risk.
Much of this abuse goes unseen by organisations — and often unreported by athletes themselves. Yet the impact is profound.
The impact on athletes goes far beyond words
Athletes consistently report that online abuse affects them psychologically, physically, socially and professionally. Abusive messages often arrive at moments of heightened vulnerability — immediately following defeat, injury or public scrutiny — when emotional resilience is already stretched.
The effects described by athletes include anxiety, loss of confidence, depression, sleep disruption and symptoms consistent with trauma responses. Over time, repeated exposure can influence performance, wellbeing and even career longevity.
Some athletes respond by withdrawing from social media entirely. But in today’s sporting landscape, this is rarely a viable solution. Online presence is often essential for sponsorship, funding, visibility and career progression — particularly in less commercialised sports.
Telling athletes to “switch off” fails to recognise both the structural pressures they face and the responsibility of sport to provide safe environments — online as well as offline.
Why sport cannot solve this alone — but must still act
Online abuse is rooted in broader societal, legal and technological issues that extend beyond sport. Jurisdictional complexity, inconsistent legal frameworks, platform limitations and evolving digital behaviours all create barriers to accountability.
However, acknowledging these challenges does not absolve sport of responsibility.
Safeguarding frameworks already recognise that harm does not need to occur in a physical space to be real. Online abuse must therefore be understood as a core safeguarding issue, not a separate or optional concern.
Sporting organisations have a duty to take reasonable, proportionate and athlete-centred action to prevent harm, respond effectively when it occurs, and pursue remedy wherever possible.
Integrating online abuse into safeguarding practice
Effective responses to online abuse are strongest when they are embedded within existing safeguarding systems and aligned to the 5R framework:
- Readiness: Having the knowledge, systems and skills in place to address online harm
- Recognition: Understanding indicators and patterns of online abuse
- Reporting: Providing trusted, accessible pathways to raise concerns
- Response: Acting swiftly, fairly and with trauma-informed care
- Remedy: Pursuing resolution, accountability and learning
Online safety should also be reflected across safeguarding policies, procedures, education programmes, risk assessments, codes of conduct, recruitment practices and ongoing monitoring — in line with the International Safeguards for Children and Adults in Sport.
Athlete-centred solutions that are available now
Importantly, solutions already exist — and many are being implemented successfully across sport.
Technology-led content moderation can hide abusive content before it reaches athletes, detect threats in real time and identify patterns or escalation risks. Even small delays in moderation can cause harm, making speed and accuracy critical.
Education programmes play a vital role in equipping athletes, coaches and support staff with the skills to recognise online risks, manage privacy settings, understand reporting options and establish healthy digital boundaries. Education must be practical, ongoing and tailored to different ages, roles and contexts.
Monitoring and investigation services provide a further layer of protection. When high-risk content is identified, trained professionals can assess threats, escalate concerns to security teams or law enforcement where necessary, and pursue proportionate consequences — including platform reporting, bans, sporting sanctions or legal action.
Crucially, all of these measures must be grounded in trauma- and violence-informed practice, ensuring that the process of seeking support does not itself cause further harm.
Centre the athlete — always
Not every athlete will experience online abuse in the same way. Responses must be flexible, respectful and led by the needs and choices of the person affected. For some, the priority may be immediate protection; for others, longer-term support, investigation or accountability.
Younger athletes, in particular, require heightened safeguarding consideration. Their developmental stage, reliance on adults and evolving identity mean that online abuse can be especially harmful — and harder to identify.
Listening to athletes, building trust and normalising help-seeking are essential if safeguarding responses are to be effective.
Moving forward: safeguarding sport, online and offline
Online abuse presents one of the most complex safeguarding challenges facing sport today. It is global, fast-moving and deeply personal. While long-term solutions require collaboration across governments, platforms and society, sport cannot wait.
Protecting athletes now means integrating online abuse into safeguarding systems, using available technology responsibly, educating stakeholders effectively and ensuring real-world consequences for harmful behaviour.
Safeguarding does not stop at the touchline. Creating safe, inclusive and harm-free sporting environments must extend into the digital spaces where athletes live, work and compete.
This blog draws on insights from Safe Sport International’s discussion paper “Safeguarding in Sport: Online Abuse of Athletes” (2026), written in collaboration with Sportradar and leading academic experts.
Download this discussion paper in full HERE
