The overwhelming favorite to win the current Australian Open, Novak Djokovic, recently spoke out about how he was misrepresented in a video that Eurosport shared on social media.
The video, which was shared by the sports broadcaster's new social media team, was deemed to be sensationalistic and taken out of context according to the 21-time Grand Slam champion. It portrayed the Serbian leaving the stadium for a quick bathroom break, in what appeared as a misunderstanding with an umpire according to Eurosport. In their video, they added a caption stating:
“Novak Djokovic defied the umpire to take an early bathroom break in his first-round match at the Australian Open (eyes emoji)”.
But that wasn't true as Djokovic later disclosed. He said, that he was allowed to leave the court by the umpire, and that video posted by Eurosport was misleading.
“Again, I have been placed in a situation where I have to react publicly. For the second time in six months, I have a problem with Eurosport. Eurosport have engaged a new company in London that is running their social media. I saw that it was someone new and they confirmed it…."
“I can’t remember the details of exactly what happened six months ago, but at the time I said I will not be giving any interviews to Eurosport. Subsequently they apologised to me, and everything was OK; but here we are again where Eurosport is sensationalising something which is completely taken out of context.”
“After my reaction today and my social media posts, Eurosport deleted theirs, same as what they did with the last one. OK, I gave an interview to Barbara Schett, who apologised to me. Boris Becker also contacted me, Mats Wilander, they all work for Eurosport. I have nothing against them. I love Eurosport, I love sport in general – I have been watching skiing on Eurosport my whole life, but these situations…”
Djokovic also expressed frustration with the lack of protection and support offered to players by the ATP and Grand Slam organizations. The Serbian himself is running his own player's association, which may help players in situations like this.
“In our organisation – ATP or WTA – there has to be a system of timely protection of players, someone who will react, do something about these things. I am an easy target to be the villain. That is how they portray me, for me that is now a normal occurrence – but I will not tolerate injustice."
He also called for a public apology from Eurosport and went on to say that both times Eurosport had apologized to him, it was done privately, and the majority of people who follow tennis would never hear about it.
“Some things I can tolerate, some I cannot – they do not deserve for something like this to just be allowed, to get away with it. Usually I don’t react, even though I could have reacted a thousand times over different things in the past. Today they went completely overboard. Nobody apologised to me publicly. Are they going to publicly apologise to me? I don’t think so. Eurosport is broadcasting the Australian Open, they are one of the biggest sports channels in the world. They could issue a public apology.”
“Both times they apologised to me privately, but people don’t know about that. I know it, and you know it – because I just told you, but the majority of people who follow tennis will never hear about it. They will still think that I defied the umpire, went to the toilet and that I didn’t follow the rules. So, again I am portrayed as the one who behaves how he wants, which is completely untrue. I explained in my social media post exactly what happened."
“Again, I am publicly asking a question: why didn’t the ATP or the Grand Slam come out and explain the situation, when they can see that the media are publicly lynching me? This has been happening continuously, there have been many situations like this one – but in the end nothing, it’s all the same. At the end of the day, if we are members of this Tour, surely there has to be some responsibility towards the players, some sort of protection. But no, ‘you do what you want and roast him as much as you want in media, while we remain silent.’”
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