Matteo Berrettini has shed light on the abuse his family have received from gamblers amid a new partnership that has been struck by the US Open.
Earlier this week, the tournament announced Kalshi as its first Official Prediction Market Partner. As part of the deal, the sports prediction company will be advertised on digital platforms and on-court signage. However, they are prohibited from being involved in markets on high-risk variables such as umpire decisions, player injuries, and code violations. Furthermore, Kalshi will share real-time data with the International Tennis Integrity Agency (ITIA) to monitor for suspicious trading activity.
The involvement of betting companies in tennis is a complex issue. Supporters argue that it will bring investment into the sport and help its development. On the other hand, research has established a strong link between betting and threats made to players on the Tour.
“It’s a complicated issue, because players – and I myself – have said in the past that we receive messages, and I’ve personally experienced moments when I didn’t really feel comfortable playing against people who disrupted the match and did things that, in my opinion, had nothing to do with tennis, especially around the court,” Berrettini said after beating Stan Wawrinka.
“I’ve seen this particularly at Challenger tournaments, and also in some videos where it was really bad. I know it’s complicated; it’s not easy to say, ‘You can come in and you can’t come in,’ because you don’t know how they’ll behave, but something definitely needs to be done.”
“On the other hand, I think that, if it’s done in the right way, if it’s managed in a controlled manner – when I’m talking about betting – if it’s something that doesn’t lead to the game being corrupted by betting, then it can actually be quite fun.”
The former world No.6 revealed earlier this year that his family reported a threat made against them from angry bettors, who contacted his brother via text message. For this reason, Berrettini argues that protecting players must be a top priority.
“At Roland Garros, he (Berrettini’s brother) received messages on his phone containing threats against my family and things like that. So I think we should set up a stronger framework – I don’t know, a stronger committee – to protect the players,” he said.
“I won a match and they were writing things like: ‘Matteo is so rubbish that, if you don’t tell him to lose’, or something like that, ‘we’ll kill your family’ or ‘we’ll do this’. They were threatening us.
“He reported everything to the ATP and we reported everything too.
“They have our phone numbers and everything else. But we’re thirty years old, we’re adults; yet when I think of the girls and the younger players, receiving this sort of message can be frightening. We’re tennis players, so it’s important to protect ourselves.”
According to research conducted by the Women’s Tennis Association (WTA) and World Tennis, 42 per cent of all verified abuse and 59 per cent of all serious abuse targeting players across tours in 2025 were from angry gamblers. 1.2 million posts and comments were analysed using the Threat Matrix service
Berrettini will play Mariano Navone in the second round of the US Open.
