To coincide with the 2025 season, the WNBA in May unveiled “No Space for Hate,” a multi-dimensional platform “designed to combat hate and promote respect across all WNBA spaces — from online discourse to in-arena behavior.”

The league said the platform was crated by a Task Force comprised of league and team representatives, and with support from the Women’s National Basketball Players Assn.

Today, the WNBA Chicago Sky have taken a major step beyond that, unveiling a partnership with Moonshot, a provider of global services to monitor and prevent online abuse and violence.

This is the first WNBA alliance for Moonshot, which said its work includes the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee.

Moonshot said its online security experts would use “advanced technology to identify and remove concerning content, assess credible risks, take actions to mitigate harm, and help the Sky interpret the underlying drivers of online abuse.”

According to Moonshot’s findings, 92% of women in public life experience abuse online and 31% of this harassment is sexual in nature.

“Hate and harassment have no place in sports,” Nadia Rawlinson, Sky co-owner and operating chairman, said via the team.

“Our partnership with Moonshot is about proactively tackling online hate, harassment, and abuse across social media and on the dark web, so our players and coaches can focus on the game of basketball and delighting our fans around the world.”

Moonshot said its goal is “not just to understand the problem, but to solve it.”

Moonshot said its “dedicated team of online security experts will use advanced technology to identify and remove concerning content, assess credible risks, take actions to mitigate harm, and help the Sky interpret the underlying drivers of online abuse. 

Chicago Sky said its players are “leaders and role models on and off the court, a position which also places them at increased risk. The Sky’s decisive action to implement this solution reflects the organization’s long-standing commitment to player health and safety, including mental health and well-being.”

“The data is abundantly clear. Female athletes, especially women of color and members of the LGBTQIA+ community, face disproportionate amounts of online harassment, abuse, and threats of violence,” continued Rawlinson. “Unfortunately, these incidents are increasing commensurately with the growth in women’s sports, sports betting, and use of artificial intelligence.”

The WNBA is not alone in seeing its women athletes attacked on social media.

In June, the Hologic WTA Tour and International Tennis Federation published the first season-wide report outlining the scale of abuse directed at players on social media and with it said they “are calling on the gambling industry to more effectively tackle those responsible.”

The report findings are taken from Signify Group’s Threat Matrix service, which went live in January 2024, “protecting players and tennis family members from targeted online hate, as well as threatening and violent direct communication.”

According to the report, between January-December 2024, 1.6 million posts and comments analyzed by Threat Matrix AI “verified 8,000 posts/comments sent from 4,200 accounts as abusive, violent or threatening.”

“Angry gamblers increasingly targeting players — notably via direct messages — sent 40% of all detected abuse across the year.”

According to the WTA and ITF, “Protecting players and the wider tennis family from vile online threat and abuse is a key priority for us. (The) report covering the first year of the Threat Matrix service shows the scale of the problem and, crucially, the actions being taken to protect our athletes.”

During 2025 March Madness, the NCAA, working with Signify Group and its Threat Matrix service to investigate online harassment in college sports, verified more than 5,000 posts containing abusive, discriminatory or threatening content.

According to the NCAA, “1-in-3 student-athletes have received abusive messages from those with a betting interest, with 80% of the abuse directed at March Madness men's and women's student-athletes.

“Women's basketball student-athletes receive approximately three times more threats than men's basketball student-athletes.”

As part of its umbrella “Draw the Line” platform, the NCAA launched “Don’t Be a Loser,” anchored by a spot that ran during the Div. I Men’s and Women’s Basketball Tournaments on media partners CBS, TNT, TBS, truTV, ESPN and ABC; as well as online and social media.

In 2024, Signify found that 42% of social media abuse during March Madness directly targeted student-athletes, while in 2025 this number decreased to 15%.

On the women's side, total abuse was down approximately 83%, and betting-related abuse declined 66%.

On the men's side, total abuse increased 140%, while abuse related to sports betting decreased 36%.

Across all participants, abuse related to sports betting was down 23%.

NCAA Efforts Lead To Decline In Betting-Related Harassment Of Student-Athletes

NCAA Combats Online Harassment Of Student-Athletes

Back to Home Page