High-profile stalking cases skyrocket as popularity of women’s sports reaches new heights

It’s hard to do your job when you fear for your life. That challenge only intensifies for professional athletes in packed arenas. Their stalkers — people who torture them with unwanted messages and appearances — could be anywhere.

An explosion in popularity has brought fame and fortune to women’s sports, but a dark side has emerged as more female athletes become the targets of unhinged fans, who are almost always male.

Tennis star Emma Raducanu brought the issue into the spotlight during the Dubai Championships in February. She was brought to tears and hid behind the umpire’s chair after spotting her stalker in the stands during a match.

“I saw him in the first game of the match, and I was like, ‘I don’t know how I’m going to finish.’ I literally couldn’t see the ball through tears,” she told reporters in March. “I could barely breathe.”

Event organizers eventually removed the man from the arena and banned him from future WTA events.

The damage had been done.

Raducanu, the 2021 U.S. Open champion, lost 7-6, 6-4 to Karolina Muchova.

“It was a very emotional time,” Raducanu said. “After the match, I did break down in tears, but not necessarily because I lost.”

The world’s 49th-ranked women’s player is just one of an increasing number of athletes going public with their experiences with stalkers. 

“At this point, every time I travel, I’m afraid that these men — it’s three to six of them, middle-aged — are going to show up and harass me,” Olympic runner Gabby Thomas said on TikTok in January.

American tennis player Coco Gauff and gymnastics icon Simone Biles responded with similar experiences.

“No same, I’m horrified of them,” Biles wrote in a TikTok comment. “Happens too often. I take pictures of them just in case.”

The surging WNBA has started to reckon with stalkers ahead of the 2025 season, which begins Friday. The top picks in the league’s past two drafts — the Indiana Fever’s Caitlin Clark and Dallas Wings’ Paige Bueckers — have had documented run-ins with stalkers.

A Texas man accused of stalking Clark was arrested in January. Investigators said he sent the Fever star dozens of messages, including sexually explicit messages that caused Clark to fear the threat of sexual assault.

The man reportedly told Clark that he bought tickets behind the Fever’s bench and drove around her home three times daily, prosecutors said.

Bueckers became the target of a stalker before her WNBA career began. In June, a 40-year-old man started emailing her school in Connecticut with marriage proposals.

The situation escalated when he flew to Connecticut in August. Authorities arrested him on unrelated charges and found lingerie and a wedding ring in his bag. He said he was going to see Bueckers, prosecutors said.

League officials told The Washington Times that the WNBA banned the two men from all practices, games and events. The league has ramped up its security protocols, providing charter flights for all teams and ensuring security staffers are on hand during flights and bus rides.

League Commissioner Cathy Engelbert said additional security protocols were a WNBA focus this offseason.

“We want to ensure that the WNBA remains a space where everyone — players, fans and partners, corporate partners — feels safe, valued and empowered,” she said at last month’s draft. “We actually assembled a dedicated task force, collaborated closely with key stakeholders, including league and team representatives, and worked with external organizations and experts.”

The league’s four-pronged approach features social media monitoring, enhanced security measures, new conduct guidelines for fans and an emphasis on mental health practitioners embedded with each team.

“There’s this kind of thought from stalkers that, ‘Well, this person is public, so I have permission to do this,’” said Anna Nasset, a stalking survivor who now shares her experience as an educator and advocate.

The WNBA’s program is a step forward for the professional ranks. Experts such as Ms. Nasset also want to see progress on the collegiate level.

“We need to see more of that, more safety around that and more education for young athletes to really prepare themselves,” Ms. Nasset said. “If I’m going to be on this level of athletics, how do I perform my best and create safety planning for the course of my life?”

Public attention has grown for student-athletes who can profit from their names, images and likenesses. USC basketball star JuJu Watkins’ face is plastered throughout Ulta stores nationwide. Clark and Bueckers had similar high exposure during their collegiate careers.

Thousands of other lower-profile athletes use their social media accounts for endorsements and paid posts. It might be easy money for student-athletes, but it can make them targets.

Social media has given fans unprecedented access to their favorite athletes. In some instances, these people can abuse, track or stalk athletes based on information online.

It presents a tough choice for young athletes, especially for women who don’t have million-dollar salaries waiting for them in the professional ranks. Do they maintain an active social media presence to make money or eschew the internet to protect their safety and peace of mind?

“By nature, women have always had to weigh that cost-benefit,” said Ms. Nasset, referencing the uber-famous Hollywood starlets of the early 20th century. “But it’s the accessibility that we have now with social media. It’s unfair. A woman shouldn’t have to weigh that.”

Clark made her decision last year.

Her arrival led to a record-breaking season for the WNBA. The league set attendance and viewership benchmarks, largely thanks to a legion of fans who started following women’s basketball because of her.

“She chose to do that in spite of the fact that she happens to have a dangerous stalker,” Ms. Nasset said. “She chose to stand up against that, saying, ‘I don’t care. I’m doing this anyway because I believe in women’s sports.’”

The issue isn’t exclusive to female athletes. Former NFL defensive lineman Aaron Donald and NBA star Zion Williamson have had high-profile run-ins with stalkers this year.

Those two men strike imposing frames, though.

Donald has a notoriously chiseled physique and posts workout videos intense enough to make viewers fatigued just by watching. Williamson stands 6 feet, 6 inches tall and is known for bullying opposing players in the paint with a physical approach.

The same can’t always be said for their WNBA counterparts.

“The threats might be less, but they’re intruding on their lives; they are stalking their lives,” Ms. Nasset said of the stalkers targeting men. She noted that victims of any gender can experience intense emotional distress, “but generally, the greater risk is posed when you have a male stalking a female.”

The Stalking Prevention Awareness and Resource Center reports that 1 in 3 women and 1 in 6 men will be stalked in their lifetime. The situations are more likely to become violent when men stalk women, the center’s data suggests.

Those numbers apply to the population at large and are not specific to athletes or other celebrities. Studies specifically analyzing athlete stalkers are hard to find. However, the NCAA reported that women’s basketball players were three times more likely to deal with stalking than men’s players, according to NBC News.

Athletes might be easier targets, said Patrick Brady, a professor at the University of Colorado Colorado Springs.

Of course, many athletes become targets by virtue of their time in the spotlight, but they also maintain strict schedules that can allow unscrupulous characters to track them, Mr. Brady said.

That effect is amplified for college athletes with limited resources and workout options.

“Especially at Division I schools, these athletes become celebrities,” Mr. Brady said. “But college life is very regimented. If I wanted to stalk an athlete, I could figure out where they work out, when their practice is and hang out in those areas — park near them so I can follow them home.”

The experts want stalking education to become a staple of onboarding for players and coaches, similar to mental health, sexual harassment and financial seminars.

“So much of this sits on the back of victims and survivors to do the work to uplift the message,” Ms. Nasset said. “If the WNBA is willing to say, ‘January is Stalking Awareness Month, and we want to educate people about this,’ that’s an incredible thing.”