Press releases
ATP turns to artificial intelligence to protect players from online abuse
New service against online abuse of professional tennis players
July 16, 2024
ATP Tour/Getty Images
By ATPTour.com/es Staff
The ATP, Tennis Data Innovations (TDI) and Sportradar have joined forces to launch Safe Sport, a new service aimed at tackling abuse against professional tennis players. The collaboration breaks barriers by integrating moderation, education and research through Artificial Intelligence (AI) into a single service to protect athletes.
The new service will be available to singles players in the ATP Top 250 singles and Top 50 doubles rankings, and will be available from this month for free and upon registration. It combines AI technologies from Sportradar and its partner, Arwen AI, to clean players’ social media channels of toxic and abusive comments, spam and bots in 29 different languages. Flagged comments will be automatically hidden in real-time, protecting players and their followers from being exposed to offensive content. Arwen currently processes 600,000 comments a day, protecting 750 million followers across Facebook, Instagram, X (Twitter), YouTube and TikTok.
In parallel, Sportradar’s dedicated team of analysts will actively investigate threats and potentially criminal comments to uncover those responsible, responding to online activity with real-world consequences. Players will also be offered an education programme to cover topics such as dealing with abuse, reducing online risks and maintaining integrity on social media platforms.
Safe Sport is the ATP’s most comprehensive initiative to date to combat online abuse, a long-standing and prevalent problem in sport and a key part of protecting player health.
Andrew Azzopardi, ATP’s Director of Safeguarding, said: “The ATP is committed to player protection and wellbeing. This includes taking a proactive stance against online abuse, which has become a significant issue in the lives of modern athletes. This collaboration will ensure that tennis plays a part in addressing this issue, and sheds light on the effects that harmful online speech can have on our communities. We are grateful for the support of TDI and the expertise of Sportradar in making this possible.”
Matthew Ebden, ATP player and Chairman of the Player Advisory Board, added: “Online abuse has become a real problem for many professional athletes, as well as for many other people around the world. Safe Sport is a game-changer and has been specifically developed to help us tackle the problem.”
Andreas Krannich, Executive Vice President Integrity Services at Sportradar, said: “This collaboration is a first for sport, bringing together AI self-moderation, education and investigative services for the first time. Safe Sport offers players enhanced protection from online hate, representing a significant step forward in safeguarding their mental and physical wellbeing, allowing them to focus on performing at their best.”
The multi-year partnership between TDI and Sport Radar began in early 2024, providing the sports technology company with global betting data and streaming rights and media data rights for all ATP Tour and ATP Challenger Tour tournaments. In addition, Sportradar provides integrity services to protect these competitions against match-fixing and corruption by monitoring and addressing integrity threats and risks through due diligence and investigative support.
Source: https://www.atptour.com/es/news/safe-sport-july-2024-announcement
