Sports data and content supplier Sportradar has launched a new player protection solution, designed to keep professional athletes safe from abuse on social media.
The service is intended to protect the mental health of players and shall be made available to all leagues, sporting federations and governing bodies.
Sportradar’s new product has already been trialled in tennis in both Europe and the US.
“We are providing a tangible output”
Andreas Krannich, Managing Director of Integrity Services at Sportradar, had the following to say about the new solution.
“Maintaining the integrity of sport and ensuring that it’s safe, fair and enjoyable for all, has long been our priority. Now, with this new service, we’ve strengthened our position in this space by safeguarding the athletes who compete in it and protecting them from online harm and social media abuse.
“We are providing a tangible output that our partners can share with their athletes and we’re providing support to those partners in pursuing an appropriate course of action. The service we now have in place can act as a deterrent to future online abuse and create real change, particularly when people see the impact it has.
“We believe this safeguarding solution can have a similar positive impact on sport as our Fraud Detection System has had on match fixing, where we’ve reported more than 5000 suspicious matches across global sport in 11 years.”
Hoping to deter abusive social media posts
Abuse on social media has been a problem in recent years for professional athletes and club account admins alike. An Al Jazeera report in Sweden earlier this year shed light on an amateur club in the country which had received online hate from gamblers who had lost money after losing a training match.
According to Sportradar, its new solution aims to identify individuals hiding behind anonymous profiles. Once this and the account’s location are found, this information can be shared authorities if legal action is deemed to be necessary. Moreover, it will help with removing abusive accounts from social platforms.
Earlier this summer, the service was tested at the Expo-Tennis Series in Germany and the US.
