The digital world makes voyeurs of us all. Nowhere is that more apparent than in the television broadcasting and social media content curated in sports. We’ve long accepted those elected to be in the public eye: celebrities, professional athletes and TV commentators, who have been subjected to a higher degree of scrutiny, judgement and even vitriol.
But now it's open season for collegiate athletes and sports fans.
You may not have consented to your name, image or likeness being transmitted across the internet but Barstool Sports, who depend on virality for marketability, has no qualms about facilitating online harassment. This issue is compounded for women, regardless if they are young fans in the audience or student athletes on the field.
The perfect storm of social media’s anonymity and intense sports-betting culture has aggravated a revitalized form of hooliganism, facilitated online and seeping into broadcast television and even real life. Hooliganism refers to the pack mentality sporting loyalties can foster, leading to rioting and antisocial behavior. Digital hooliganism can be found with every scroll under a sporting page, replete with threats of violence and rampant misogyny.
Women, in particular, face the brunt of what is termed "gendertrolling," an onslaught of online scrutiny that quickly devolves into threats of personal, sexual violence. “Gendertrolling” has previously targeted journalists, but now college athletes and unwitting fans can face an intense torrent of graphic gender-based insults and threats.
Women’s basketball players have faced particularly disproportionate harassment. Women’s basketball players faced three times the abuse compared to their male counterparts. 32 percent of this harassment consists of both sexist and sexual abuse, while a staggering 51 percent of all recorded abuse was discriminatory in nature.
This issue is exacerbated as sports-betting gains popularity and intensity. A report from the NCAA reported “angry sports bettors” to be one of the most common types of harassment college athletes receive. Sports-betting aggravates misguided “hooliganistic” behavior, leading to constant sexual, discriminatory harassment directed at women in sports.
When fans “pay” into the results of a sporting event, they may feel entitled to know all the factors contributing to the result, including the personal and intimate lives of young athletes. We’ve seen this directly as rumors circulating from the Duke cheer sheet led to online harassment toward Deja Kelly with little regard for her privacy and security. The “degrading” and “sexist" abuse persisted as Kelly's shooting and free-throw percentages in her final season at UNC dipped, all of which contributed to her decision to leave UNC.
Paige Bueckers is one of many young female athletes whose digital surveillance translated into threatening surveillance from stalkers. This transcends professional and collegiate leagues. Caitlin Clark, Emma Raducanu, Katie Boulter and Livvy Dunne. These women, and more, have had their personal lives outside the arena permanently changed because misogynistic behavior from “unruly” fans.
