On Safer Internet Day 2024, Stuart Miller and Gary Bye from the ITF Integrity & Legal Department, write about the importance of protecting the entire tennis community online, and the ITF’s wider safeguarding work.

Safer Internet Day is a hugely important campaign and one that the ITF is very proud to support. It is a fantastic initiative and this year’s theme, ‘Together for a better internet’ is something we can all get behind.

The campaign is focused on making the internet and social media platforms safer places for everyone to interact, with a particular focus on children and young people.

You can find out more, become a supporter, and download a wide range of free resources from Saferinternetday.org. You can view the ITF’s supporter profile here.

At the ITF, we are committed to safeguarding tennis players across the world in order that they can enjoy our sport and develop their talent in a safe and secure environment.

Juniors Education

In November 2023, we introduced a mandatory education course for all our Junior players to complete via ITF Academy.

Through this, they learn about their right to enjoy tennis in a safe and inclusive environment, free from harassment and abuse, as well as how to report incidents or concerns, and who they can reach out to for help.

We made sure that everyone got the benefit of this education, by linking it to their ability to access the International Player Identification Number (IPIN) online system, which allows them to enter ITF sanctioned tournaments.

This is a measure of how important we believe this level of education is for Junior players.

This course is also now available to all 13-18 year olds who participate on any of our ITF Development Programmes, and over 17,000 active players on the 2023 ITF World Tennis Tour Juniors completed the course in 2023.

Threat Matrix

Safeguarding is a priority for us at all levels of the game. In January 2024, alongside the WTA, All England Club and USTA we launched a proactive monitoring service to protect athletes from online abuse and threats.

Using a combination of artificial intelligence and open-source data, a service was launched that:

• Automatically monitors all public-facing social media posts to players accounts for harassment, abuse and threat.
• Provides rapid threat assessment for any risk to personal safety.
• Alerts social media platforms of abuse that breaches those platforms’ guidelines, to facilitate removal of the offending content.
• Supports law enforcement agencies in the investigation of the most serious cases.
• Includes educational support programmes to help players mitigate abuse and threat.

There is no escaping the fact that social media abuse can be a serious problem for athletes. This initiative is a decisive and industry-leading step towards addressing it.

Tennis must be a sport in which players can compete to the best of their ability at all levels, free from any form of harassment.

These are two steps we have taken towards achieving that goal, but there is much more to do. By working alongside other governing bodies across the sport and supporting campaigns like Safer Internet Day, we are determined to continue this progress.