Much has been made of the malicious social media posts toward professional and amateur athletes, particularly after an underachieving performance. However, there is a company whose sole purpose is to root out the bad actors and expose them to the teams in those cases where an athlete has been victimized.
Reversing the Spotlight
Mobile sports betting has caught fire in the United States, and the markets in which it operates have financially benefited. Taxes on sportsbook operators’ revenues are designated for a wide variety of social projects, such as education, lowering property taxes, or infrastructure, to name a few. However, there is an ugly underbelly that has not gone unnoticed but is difficult to remedy. Online abuse toward athletes by bettors and fans alike who are disgruntled with an individual’s performance can manifest into threats and harassment. This is where London-based Signify enters the picture.
The delicate balance of categorizing which posts are truly threatening versus simply complaining is Signify’s job, and it uses proprietary artificial intelligence to pore over vile social media posts and direct messages, assuming it is granted direct access, aimed at athletes and/or the organization with which they are associated.
Jake Marsh, Signify’s Head of Sport, said, “Those sports with a high betting interest — basketball, tennis, soccer, football — attract high levels of abuse. A lot of is due to inherent racism, xenophobia, homophobia. Other issues come to the fore. During March Madness, there were around 4,000 verified abusive messages from the second round onward. Within that, there were about 500 abusive posts connected to betting.
“In our experience, when you take the fight back to people doing the abuse, a lot of them are just cowards.”
Red Cards for Trolls
During the 2023 Rugby World Cup, Signify’s Threat Matrix reported troubling incidents to law enforcement in Australia, France, New Zealand, South Africa and the U.K., with one culminating in an arrest.
Perhaps the most compelling outcome was the use of Signify’s services by the English Premier League’s Arsenal FC, which has seen a marked decrease in online harassment and more civil online discourse.
“In the last three seasons, they’ve banned at least 26 people within their own membership,” he said. “At Arsenal, the waiting list [for season tickets] is 25 years, so if you get banned for online abuse, that’s a life ban — you’re out. That has had a real impact. This season, the level of homophobic incidents went down and the number of bans went down significantly.”
An Epic Partnership
Gambling-harm prevention specialists EPIC Global Solutions has recently partnered with Signify in an effort to bolster the prevention of problem gambling. The partnership will also establish a “digital product development” that would supplement Epic’s in-person outreach program to amateur and professional athletes as well as team staff.
“When they’re talking about gambling risk, gambling harm, and the effects gambling can have as an athlete when you don’t get as many rebounds as you should, we’ll be able to give EPIC exactly the advice they need to advise players how to be safe online and how to protect themselves,” said Marsh. “Athletes often will get abuse on their DMs and then repost it online. It just creates a pile-on and gets worse. We’ll help them with advice to have a safer online experience.”
Lifting the veil of anonymity bad actors enjoy is a powerful way to curtail much of the harassment, especially when those people receive cease-and-desist letters from attorneys or even visits from law enforcement. “I think the whole world is just coming to grips with this,” said Marsh. “Action and consequences are a big part of it.”
Calculators
