Alice Tubello and the Dark Side of Online Gambling in Tennis
It was a summer night in August 2024, high in the thin air of Arequipa, Peru - 2,300 meters above sea level - when Alice Tubello, then ranked No. 219 in the world, walked off the court after a grueling three-hour match. She had just lost to a local player, unranked but clearly comfortable in the tough altitude conditions.
Exhausted and emotional, the 23-year-old French player sat down, tears still fresh, and reached for her phone to book her return trip home. What greeted her instead was a flood of hate.
Her Instagram lit up with messages - hundreds of them - in multiple languages. “Pathetic sad whore.”
“I hope you broke your arms.” “Pray God will kill you.”
The vitriol was immediate, brutal, and deeply personal. Tubello wasn’t just dealing with the sting of a tough loss - she was being targeted by online gamblers furious that their bets didn’t pay off.
“I was the No. 1 seed, and I’d been winning a lot that summer,” she recalled more than a year later, sitting in her hometown in central France during a quiet November morning in 2025. She’d spent the morning training at her local club and was prepping for a team event with Stade Clermontois the following day - a few hundred kilometers away. Life on the lower rungs of the pro tennis ladder is a grind, and for Tubello, currently ranked No. 430, it’s a life that now includes something far more sinister than just tough travel schedules and underfunded tournaments: the constant pressure and harassment from angry gamblers.
Tennis has long been a magnet for betting - in part because of its global reach and 24/7 match schedule, but also because of the granularity of the action. You can place wagers not just on who wins or loses, but on individual points, double faults, even aces. That level of detail makes it a playground for bettors, and when things don’t go their way, players - especially those in the lower tiers - often bear the brunt.
Back in that hotel room in Arequipa, where the Wi-Fi was stronger, the messages kept coming. Tubello’s Instagram inbox swelled with more than 300 insults.
On Facebook, it got even uglier. A new account - created just two hours after her loss - had posted a page with her photo.
The top post? “Alice Tubello, I’m ashamed to have a pedophile as a father.”
“It was like a spiral,” Tubello said. “One post, then another, then another.
It was out of control. Straight to hell.”
As she scrolled, she saw posts not just about her, but about her family - including a photo of her nephew’s young son, captioned with a monkey emoji and a racial slur. She still has the screenshots saved on her phone.
The flight back to France was long and heavy. The Facebook page was still up.
Despite her efforts, Meta hadn’t taken it down. Her father had to return to work on Monday, knowing colleagues might have seen the posts.
Friends had been tagged, ensuring that the damage reached beyond just her.
Eventually, with help from friends who knew how to navigate the system, Tubello got the page removed. She hired two lawyers and filed a complaint against an unknown party - a necessary first step in launching a legal investigation. Eighteen months later, the case is still open, but progress has been slow.
Tubello has been a pro for nearly a decade. She knows the circuit.
She knows the grind. And she’s seen how deeply gambling has infiltrated her sport - especially at the lower levels.
She’s received offers to throw matches. She’s seen gamblers in the stands trying to influence outcomes.
And she’s lived through the torrent of abuse that follows a loss.
Since that night in Arequipa, she’s changed her routine. “Now, before matches, I don’t check Instagram.
I don’t want to go crazy. And I don’t look after a loss either,” she said.
“But even if I win or lose, I still get about 10 messages per match. Mangled corpses.
Death threats. From the outside, it’s shocking.
For us, it’s just the daily routine.”
Sometimes, she saves the worst messages - the ones with the most grotesque photoshops or the most vile insults - and shares them with friends. It’s a coping mechanism, a way to reclaim a little control. “They’re like little nuggets,” she joked, darkly.
Just a few days before this interview, Tubello had made a semifinal run at a tournament in Loulé, Portugal. Even after a strong showing, the hate was still there.
She opened her phone and showed a few of the latest messages: “Nasty bitch.” “I hope you’ll die.”
“You made me lose a lot of money today.”
And then there was the one from January 2025, during Australian Open qualifying. A bettor had sent her a screenshot of his wager on her match: €28,000.
No message, just the bet. The implication was clear.
This is the reality for players like Alice Tubello - not just the physical and emotional toll of competing week in, week out, but the added weight of being a target for those who see them not as athletes, but as variables in a financial game. And when the numbers don’t fall their way, the rage comes fast and furious.
For Tubello, the focus remains on her game, her training, her next match. But the noise never fully fades. It’s always just one scroll away.