PGA pro Max Homa sat at the microphone for his media availability ahead of July’s John Deere Classic. It had been one of the least productive seasons of his career, with a T12 at The Masters standing as his only top-20 finish to that point.

But for all those frustrations on the course, that day, the 34-year-old took time to talk about the challenges he had been feeling off the course… specifically, on why he had largely taken a step back on some social media. “It is quite absurd how comfortable people feel writing awful things,” he said, alluding to the anonymity these platforms provide.

“I don’t know if it’s the gambling world or whatnot. I’m happy they can do it because it seems fun as hell in golf, but people say some bad, bad things. You get people telling you you should die on the internet,” Homa said. “It has nothing to do with not connecting. I love connecting with people, but I try to do it in person a bit more because I have yet to meet somebody in person who has said something even remotely mean.”

That Sunday, Homa finished tied for fifth at John Deere, his best finish of the season. But that wasn’t good enough for “zane_layer3” on Instagram (an account that no longer exists or is unsearchable), who direct messaged a vulgar rant to Homa’s account. The golfer eventually posted a screenshot with the caption “I think he lost his parlay” along with a laughing emoji.

Homa’s performance also wasn’t good enough for “Carl-Watkins-5” on Venmo, who requested $1,900 from Homa with the caption “Bc you can’t putt under pressure.” Homa took a screenshot and responded sharply on his Instagram story, “Gamble like a big boy Carl and take ur lumps like the rest of us.”

This wasn’t the first time Homa has had to deal with the public acting in this manner. Around the time of the 2024 U.S. Open, The Washington Post reported Homa received Venmo requests multiple times per week, with the golfer saying, “That gets old.” A year later, ahead of the 2025 U.S. Open, world No. 1-ranked golfer Scottie Scheffler said he deleted Venmo because he was tired of the interactions he would have with fans on the platform.

“I was either getting paid by people or people were requesting me a bunch of money when I didn’t win, it wasn’t a good feeling. But no, I don’t pay attention to the favorite stuff or anything like that,” Scheffler said, referring to betting odds. “The most that somebody would send me was a couple of bucks here or there.

“That didn’t happen nearly as much as the requests did.”

Venmo was designed to be an easy way for people to pay each other, generally for things such as reimbursements on meals and movie tickets.

However, Venmo’s newsfeed — where users can see what their friends are paying and receiving, if they choose to make that public — inherently creates a social media aspect that encourages engagement. In the social media age, where the veil of anonymity grants those spectators the gusto to disrespect athletes with near impunity, adding money to the mix creates a potentially troubling precedent.

It takes effort and luck to find celebrities on Venmo. For example, Homa has never publicly revealed his Venmo account handle, but a search for his name on the platform reveals an account that very well could be his. Venmo does allow users to make themselves private in the sense that they can limit who sees who their friends are and what payments they make, but it does not have a way for users to be “totally unfindable” to the public, as that would conflict with the central use case for the vast majority of its customers.

It creates a scenario where users can find public figures and continually send them Venmo requests, if they so choose, leaving prominent athletes with really only one solution.

“I eventually had to change my name on Venmo,” Ottawa Senators captain Brady Tkachuk told ESPN. “I had it since college — there was a selfie of me and my name. People got a hold of that, so I had to change my name on it and take down my profile picture. Now when I Venmo people they’re probably like, ‘Who the hell is Venmoing me?'”

“Ensuring a safe and positive experience on Venmo is a top priority,” a Venmo spokesperson told ESPN. “Venmo users are prohibited from acting in a manner that could be considered harassment. When we become aware of this taking place on the platform we take immediate action, including potentially banning users from the platform.” While the spokesperson said the company tracks these cases and bans users as necessary, they would not elaborate on how often it occurs.

Venmo requests are just one avenue for people to harass athletes online and can actually be among the more innocuous forms of heckling. Retired professional tennis player Mardy Fish said he heard and saw almost every form of razzing when he was playing tournaments all over the world, but the internet can add a whole new layer to the cruelty.

“The Venmo request seems pretty funny and easy in a ‘haha’ funny way of like, ‘Hey dude, I bet 20 bucks on you, you owe me 20 bucks. Can’t believe you didn’t win.’ ‘Yeah, screw off, whatever,'” he told ESPN. “It’s when they get personal and they start really attacking. Max is a buddy of mine, so I saw what he posted after his final round in John Deere and it’s gross. These people would never say it to your face and they just feel so comfortable with this social media stuff that there’s no accountability. There’s zero accountability.”

From the time Fish began his career in the early 2000s until now, he said there has been a marked difference in the way spectators treat players because of betting being so prevalent, and he’s not the only athlete who shares that sentiment. In an anonymous poll of 133 respondents, The Athletic found that 78.2% of MLB players feel that “legalized sports betting has changed how fans treat you or your teammates.”

“Oh, I’m No. 1 on that list right now. I had so many [fans] at one point that were requesting money. It wasn’t even for winning or scoring — it was for my shots or my hits,” Tkachuk said. “Honestly, I think it’s funny. Like, people really think I’m going to send them money for not making the shots? I’m more pissed that I didn’t win the game or score or whatever it may be. I could care less about not hitting the four and a half or whatever the cover is for the [prop] bet.”

“It’s pretty funny that people get so emotional and mad,” Tkachuk adds. “That’s not even our thought process.”

Fish was at the center of an in-person incident at the American Century Championship, a celebrity golf tournament that he won in 2020 and 2024. In 2023, he held a slim lead over Stephen Curry headed to the final hole and, as he was teeing off on 18, a spectator yelled during his backswing causing him to shank the shot.

Curry would ultimately sink an eagle putt to win the tournament, but Fish claims that he found out later the heckler had placed money on Curry to win. It tarnished what had otherwise been a great event.

“It was more surprising that it happened here because American Century puts on such an awesome tournament and a friendly event, and everybody’s so happy and having a great time. So that’s why it was jarring for us,” Fish said.

The practice of bettors doing anything to get inside athletes’ heads is spreading, and the perpetrators are becoming more brazen. In June, a bettor relentlessly heckled Olympic gold medalist Gabby Thomas during a Grand Slam Track event in Philadelphia, later bragging that his actions caused Thomas to lose her race and allowed him to win his parlay. FanDuel has since banned the bettor from its platform.

In May, an intoxicated bettor overseas sent messages on social media threatening to murder the family of Houston Astros pitcher Lance McCullers Jr. after a bad start. The bettor eventually apologized to McCullers after the Houston Police Department got involved, a byproduct of efforts from the Major League Baseball Players Association to step in to protect its players in serious cases like this one.

“The Players Association takes player safety very seriously and because of that we employ a director of security who is a former FBI agent with law enforcement contacts across the U.S. and internationally,” an MLBPA spokesperson told ESPN. “He regularly fields safety questions and concerns from players and their families on a variety of issues and corresponds with MLB security and individual team security personnel across MLB and MiLB.”

Even college athletes, not at the age nor pay grade to necessarily be dealing with these issues, haven’t been spared from the ire of spurned bettors. In September, then-Auburn quarterback Payton Thorne tried to make light of bettors sending him Venmo requests. “It’s funny. When they lose money, they want their money back. But when they win money on a parlay, no one’s ever sent me any of the money,” he said on “The Next Round” podcast.

In October, the NCAA published a study outlining that at least 12% of publicly posted social media abuse was perpetrated by “angry sports bettors,” with some posts being explicitly linked to betting and others implicitly. The NCAA has made strides to stymie the issue and reported abuse related to sports betting was down by 23%, according to its studies in partnership with the Signify Group.

The sports world changed significantly when the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act (PASPA) in 2018. The decision opened the floodgates for legal sports betting and instantly turned a recreation, played in the shadows by the few who sought it out, into the mainstream behemoth it is today.

While there are certainly benefits to be had through tax revenue and the elimination of the black market, there are, of course, unintended consequences — and the increased harassment of athletes is a prevalent one. One pro sports official told ESPN that they don’t recall these specific issues being present before the striking down of PASPA.

Sports betting drives engagement and gives fans a way to feel like they’re part of the game, but their use of social media and financial applications presents a troubling mental and emotional dimension that wasn’t present to athletes before this era. By having a literal investment in the action on the field, is it any wonder that some bettors might believe that they are now playing the game themselves?

Because they have paid the price of admission and, maybe, because they believe the customer is always right, the modern heckler seems to feel entitled to the money owed them by the player. Or, maybe they believe they need to play the mental game. Either way, this is not what the players signed up for.

ESPN senior NHL writer Greg Wyshynski contributed reporting for this piece.