Monique Barry: tennis player unpacks hate messages and threats

Kiwi tennis player Monique Barry has revealed she receives abusive messages after losing matches on the international tennis circuit.

Barry, ranked 480 in the world, opened up about the abuse and death threats she'd faced from angry commenters - and she suspects many are from international bettors who gambled on her matches.

She joined Elliott Smith to discuss.

LISTEN ABOVE

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:06):
You're listening to the Weekend Sport podcast with Jason Vine
from News Talk zedb B.

Speaker 2 (00:13):
This article written by Bonnie Jansen from the New Zealand
Herald titled online Abuse Manique Barry James What revealed threatening
messages received by tennis players and Killey tennis player Manique
Barry and James Watt detailed the kind of messages that
they get after losing matches on the International Tennis Circuit.

(00:34):
Now Barry is ranked four hundred and eighty in the world.
The messages that have come from people that have gambled
on their singles matches from anywhere around the globe, death threats,
messages like I'm going to kill you. I hope you
kill yourself. You suck. I will find you, and that's

(00:55):
just the start of it. Manique Barry joins us here
on news Talk ZBB. Monique, thanks for your time with
us this afternoon.

Speaker 3 (01:03):
No worries. Thank you for having me. Well.

Speaker 2 (01:05):
I read the piece and here Alds written by Bonnie
Jensen that you contributed to and spoke to about it,
and well, to be honest, I was horrified by some
of the messages that you get as a tennis player
out on circuit from any number of individual people. When
did the start happening? And have you been surprised by

(01:25):
the amount of messages that you've been getting?

Speaker 3 (01:30):
So it all starts when you place professional tournaments, So
I think it would have started when I was about
seventeen eighteen, even just local tournaments that are like live streamed,
which I didn't realize were able to be bad on.
But I soon realized that quite quickly. And I mean

(01:53):
at the start, you're very surprised when you're getting all
these messages and hate messages and how people are finding you.
And then once you kind of learn learn about it,
it's normal.

Speaker 2 (02:05):
Now, how do you brush it off as normal when
I've seen some of the messages and they're fairly explicit
and abusive. How do you how do you brush it
off so easily like you've just done.

Speaker 3 (02:18):
I think it's just when you know that everyone else
is getting the same thing, you know it's it's not
just yourself, And you also know that you know people
people have obviously lost a lot of money, and you
know they're not really thinking about how us players are
actually humans sometimes, so I think sometimes you just can't

(02:43):
you can't retaliate and do anything but feel sorry for
them in a way.

Speaker 2 (02:49):
The messages that you listed in the article are you know,
quite harrowing to sort of receive what what are the
worst stuff without wanting to sort of go back and
tread through it again. But what are the kind of
stuff that you do get from these unnamed trolls?

Speaker 3 (03:06):
Any thing? Really? I mean, you get threats, you get
you know, anything personal about yourself. Sometimes they can get
your family involved. Others are you know, abusing you about
your life and just talking about the whole match. Sometimes

(03:26):
it just goes on and on.

Speaker 2 (03:28):
Unfortunately, do you report these messages to Instagram or Facebook
or whatever platform they're coming through.

Speaker 3 (03:36):
If it starts to get a bit too personal where
they start to say, like you know, I know where
you live or about your family, that's when you actually
report it to the ITF and they start to investigate it.
But if it's just you know, because sometimes you just
get too many, you just either block and report them
on the socials or you just simply ignore it and

(03:57):
delete the messages because sometimes there's just too many.

Speaker 2 (04:00):
Does it surprise you that people are gambling on I
guess your matches on the other side the world or
that are live streamed and maybe not available to a
huge audience.

Speaker 3 (04:11):
Yes, yeah, it is quite surprising, to be honest, because
sometimes you're in the middle of nowhere and you still
have people betting on you, and you're kind of wondering
how they even know about it. But I mean it's
I guess it's just their choice on what they choose
to bet on.

Speaker 2 (04:26):
I guess it's pretty widespread. For yourself obviously, you know,
playing it year for Vince, and then you know, as
you go up the chain, players you know all around
the world with they're range one and you're ranked in
the four hundred, you know, people across the spectrum of
tennis must be getting, you know, abuse every day. Do
you talk about that as you know of players out

(04:48):
on the tours.

Speaker 3 (04:49):
I've actually seen Caroline Garcia, she used to be a
top twenty player and she made a post about it
and all the comments that she got and she's trying
to spread awareness. And I know another girl, Priscilla hon
she's big in Australia, top top one fifty and she's
doing the same as well. And sometimes even play players

(05:12):
that are maybe one thousand have also. We've also reposted
it because I don't think it's gotten enough recognition, but
I think it's starting to be a conversation starter or
you know, we're all helping each other out as players,
just you know, not letting it get to us as much.

Speaker 2 (05:32):
Sorry, I was just gonna say, have the it, you've
been good or you know, dealt with it in a
way that you're happy with. In terms of this abuse.

Speaker 3 (05:41):
I mean, I personally haven't reported to the its, so
I don't know how much they've gone and investigated most
of the most of the other spans or trolls that
they've had, but I'm hoping that they have at least
tried to think of something that we can start doing.

(06:01):
I've noticed with Instagram they've actually managed to hit like
hide those those types of requests that come through messages,
so I haven't actually been able to see them like
through my dms, but they'll still come through on my
posts like comments, but I haven't been able to see
them through requests as such anymore, which is good.

Speaker 2 (06:25):
Do you think it's I guess a combination, because say
twenty years ago, no one would have been able to
contact anyone like they came with social media now and
now there's so much more beating as well. That is
sort of a combined problem between beating and also the
access to athletes through social media.

Speaker 3 (06:41):
Yeah, I mean, like it's tough. I spoke to one
of the other players, and you know, you can't really
keep your account private because you also want to be
able to open up to sponsors and people to find
you in a good way. But then also the other
way is the better is and they can find you
through there and obviously send abuse and things like that.

(07:04):
But I think it's just going to be an ongoing matter.
But I'm hoping that players can just kind of, you know,
go on with their career and maybe the more that
we talk about it, the more maybe I don't know,
some chance that betters would stop stop the abusing players

(07:25):
or athletes.

Speaker 2 (07:26):
Do you think more can be done?

Speaker 3 (07:30):
To be honest, I just think there's so many betters
that I there's only so much we can do, and
you can't really stop them from messaging athletes. But I mean, yeah,
I honestly don't really have a solution for it, But
I think making people more aware of that maybe we
maybe someone can come up with an idea to do that.

Speaker 2 (07:54):
Have other players spoken to you about it since that
article Win Win Life A couple.

Speaker 3 (07:59):
Have a couple of New Zealand players, but they also
you know, they can relate to that as well, and
they're happy that I was able to speak about it,
and I'm hoping that people can read about it as
well and take the time to be more aware of
that and what we kind of go through.

Speaker 2 (08:18):
Absolutely well, Monika, wish you all the best for twenty
twenty five on the court, and thanks for being so
open about this topic offered as well. Appreciate your time,
no worries, Thank you. That was Manick Barry joining us
on News talk Z being New Zealand tennis player talking
about some of the social media abuse that she's copped
and this article in the Herald that first put this

(08:39):
to light, and there's screenshots of it. There's screeds of
the stuff for people who have lost money on second
tier level tennis tournaments. That's the crazy thing. We're not
talking world number ones, not that it will excuse it,
but we're not talking about the Grand Slams and top ten,

(09:00):
top five players coppying this. This is a player in
the four hundreds in the world playing it of tournaments
that you can bet on is it just too much?
Sports Bidding Now

Speaker 1 (09:16):
For more from Weekend Sport with Jason Fine, listen live
to News Talk set B weekends from midday, or follow
the podcast on iHeartRadio