Exploring Overloading Across Traditional Sport, Esports, and Streaming Domains

Overloading is an under-recognised, yet increasingly pervasive form of online abuse. It is characterised by the large-scale, often coordinated, targeting of individuals or systems with excessive digital communication, notifications, or interactions. In the traditional sports domain, overloading forces recipients to triage hundreds or thousands of abusive messages, comments, or causes technical disruptions, often within short timeframes. While increasingly visible in traditional sports, overloading is not confined to this domain. The esports and streaming domain, being inherently digital, also experiences this issue, with unique vulnerabilities linked to real-time interactivity and platform-based infrastructures. Like athletes in traditional sports, esports players and streamers operate in high-pressure public environments where audience engagement offers both opportunity and acute vulnerability to abuse. Both rely heavily on visibility, audience engagement, and digital platforms, factors that not only enable connection but also create pathways for large-scale, targeted abuse. This chapter examines overloading across traditional sports and esports/streaming domains to show how it manifests in each, the impact on targeted individuals, and potential solutions. By placing these in the same conversation, this chapter hopes to demonstrate shared patterns of online abuse and context-specific challenges, using each domain as a source of learning for the other.