For today’s athletes, social media presence is increasingly important for maintaining a public image, gaining sponsorships, and brand partnerships.
With fraudulent followers, AI, and bots dominating our feeds, are today’s tennis stars as influential as we think?
With this in mind, we have analysed the top professional tennis players’ social media stats to reveal the pro tennis players with the most fake followers.
The Men’s Tennis Stars with the Most Fake Followers
| Rank | Player | Instagram Followers | Estimate Number of Fake Followers | Fake Followers % |
| 1 | Taylor Fritz | 752K | 218,456 | 29.05% |
| 2 | Tommy Paul | 362K | 102,012 | 28.18% |
| 3 | Andrey Rublev | 591K | 158,388 | 26.80% |
| 4 | Grigor Dimitrov | 1.2M | 292,320 | 24.36% |
| 5 | Novak Djokovic | 15.7M | 3,708,340 | 23.62% |
| 6 | Frances Tiafoe | 816K | 192,331 | 23.57% |
| 7 | Daniil Medvedev | 1.3M | 283,270 | 21.79% |
| 8 | Holger Rune | 1M | 202,500 | 20.25% |
| 9 | Alexander Zverev | 2.2M | 443,740 | 20.17% |
| 10 | Alex De Minaur | 432K | 86,098 | 19.93% |
The full dataset is available here.
American sportsman Taylor Fritz takes first place for the male tennis players with the most fake followers, with 29.05% of his followers deemed fake, equating to a whopping 218K fake accounts.
In his professional life, Fritz only just misses the podium as he currently sits in fourth place in the ATP men’s singles rankings. The talented tennis star boasts sponsorships from Motorola, Hugo Boss and Chipotle, amongst other global brands. He frequently posts tennis shots whilst donning these logos on his profile.
Coming in at a close second place, the US’ Tommy Paul’s following on Instagram consists of 28.18% fake followers. The athlete who rarely posts personal shots, preferring tennis-centric content, has an estimated 102K fake followers, making up nearly one-third of his total 362K followers.
Brands like Motorola, New Balance and Celsius are proud sponsors of the current 12th-place tennis pro according to the 2025 ATP rankings.
Andrey Rublev, hailing from Russia, lands in third place with 26.80% fake followers and currently sits in 17th place in the ATP rankings. The athlete with more than half a million Instagram followers (591K) works hard and plays hard, with his socials mostly consisting of personal shots with occasional tennis photos. The player also boasts a clothing line called Rublo with 15.9K followers and the Andrey Rublev Foundation, a charity to provide financial aid to ill children, whose Instagram has 3.9K followers.
On the flipside, Ben Shelton is the top pro male tennis player with the fewest fake followers at 11.59%, an impressive figure for a public figure with close to one million followers (922K).
The Women’s Tennis Stars with the Most Fake Followers
| Rank | Player | Instagram Followers | Estimate Number of Fake Followers | Fake Followers % |
| 1 | Ekaterina Alexandrova | 39.4K | 15.4K | 39.22% |
| 2 | Donna Vekic | 317K | 106K | 33.59% |
| 3 | Madison Keys | 591K | 109K | 33.08% |
| 4 | Daria Kasatkina | 367K | 117K | 31.96% |
| 5 | Jessica Pegula | 271K | 85.4K | 31.51% |
| 6 | Elina Svitolina | 1.8M | 527K | 29.26% |
| 7 | Aryna Sabalenka | 2.8M | 794K | 28.35% |
| 8 | Liudmila Samsonova | 42.8K | 11.9K | 27.77% |
| 9 | Elena Rybakina | 600K | 163K | 27.14% |
| 10 | Jasmine Paolini | 586K | 153K | 26.16% |
The full dataset is available here.
The study revealed that the top women’s tennis players have a higher percentage of fake followers (26.11%) compared to the men (20.03%). Coming in first in the women’s tennis fake follower league is Ekaterina Alexandrova with a staggering 39.22% fake followers. The Russian tennis pro is sitting at 20th place in the 2025 WTA rankings and has the smallest following from the top 20 ranked men and women in tennis, with just 39.4K followers.
Second place goes to Donna Vekic with a total of 317K followers but 33.59% fake followers, meaning an eye-watering 106K followers are fake. The 28 year old olympic medallist features not just tennis accolades on her account but also makeup and skincare content with partnerships with L’Oréal and other brands.
Madison Keys sits in third place with 33.08% of her 331K Instagram followers made up of fake profiles. The American is working hard on and off of the court, ranking 7th in the WTA rankings of 2025 and mastering the world of nonprofit as a founder of Kindness Wins, a foundation supporting youth access to sports, education and more to help create a kinder world.
On the other hand, Emma Navarro is the top women’s tennis player with the fewest fake followers, with only 12.83% of her 234K followers making up fake accounts.
Methodology
- VIP Grinders commissioned this research, exploring the social media presence of tennis players.
- Firstly, a seed list of the top 20 female and male Tennis players was created, pulling data from ATP and WTA rankings.
- Modash platform (https://www.modash.io/) was used to create a social media presence profile for each player in the list, using the following metrics: total followers, engagement rates, and the quantity of fake followers.
- Missing from the dataset were social media metrics for one player, Diana Shnaider. Hence, this player was subsequently removed from the overall rating calculation.
- The data was collected on 20/05/2025 and is accurate as of then.
- The full dataset is available here.
