Imagine playing your favorite sport and giving it your all in every game. Additionally, they are balancing academic work while putting pressure on themselves to succeed both in the classroom and in the field. If that’s not enough pressure, strangers may also harass you through social media and spew abusive threats because they lost money based on your or your team’s performance.
It’s a mental health nightmare.
Harassment related to sports betting can cause serious harm to the mental health and well-being of student-athletes. The NCAA is taking steps to address the rise in sports betting, including monitoring and reporting abusive social media content, providing e-learning content, on-campus education, and even lobbying states to change their sports betting laws. We are working on more than just this. The NCAA believes that bets on the performance of individual college athletes, known as prop bets, should be eliminated. This type of betting threatens the integrity of the competition as it subjects individuals to harassment and is easier to manipulate. That’s why the NCAA is advocating for the elimination of player-specific prop bets in college competitions. The NCAA’s efforts are paying off.
For example, in Ohio, student-athletes, campus leaders, athletics administrators, and state government offices worked with gaming regulators to remove prop bets from the books across the state. Since Ohio’s move, states such as Vermont, Maryland and Louisiana have moved to ban prop bets. The NCAA is also asking states to implement anti-harassment measures, including implementing a reporting system that would allow states to place certain bettors who harass student-athletes on a list that prohibits them from placing bets. . West Virginia has taken action in this area and created a framework that other states are interested in modeling. Student-athletes are speaking out about this issue and working to raise awareness about the negative effects of harassment. Their voices are essential to this effort.
Just 12 days after North Carolina legalized sports betting, including player prop bets, in college tournaments, North Carolina men’s basketball student-athlete Armando Bacot placed a bet via private social media direct message after his performance. Publicly reported that he had suffered related abuse.
“It’s terrible. I think I didn’t get enough rebounds in the last game either. I thought I played well in the last game, but when I looked at my direct messages, there were over 100 people saying it wasn’t good because I didn’t get enough rebounds. “I was there,” Bacot said.
In response to these comments and support from the NCAA, the North Carolina state legislature introduced a bill that would ban prop bets for college athletes. New Jersey state legislators also introduced a bill with bipartisan support that would ban prop gambling at colleges.
Earlier this year, Cody Shimp and Division I Student-Athlete Advisory Committee Chair and Vice Chair Morgan Wynn, along with NCAA President Charlie Baker, spoke to college athletic leaders about the seriousness of online harassment. I wrote a memo to them. They called on campus officials to use their voices to bring about change and strengthen safeguards to protect student-athletes from abuse.
“The U.S. sports betting landscape is rapidly evolving and requires careful consideration for all involved stakeholders,” Shimp, Wynn and Baker said in the memo. “The NCAA continues to play a leading role in this field to identify practical solutions to protect against harassment and other sports betting hazards. Your role is critical in driving local change. Together, we can help our student-athletes compete in a safer collegiate sports atmosphere. ”
The NCAA has launched several initiatives to address harassment, including its involvement with Signify Group. The company’s Artificial Intelligence Threat Matrix service will assist the association in investigating and responding to online abuse and threats against NCAA Championship participants, including student-athletes, coaches, officials, and committee members for the 2023-24 championship season. We support you. This unique initiative aims to further promote the mental health and well-being of the college sports community through data collection and analysis.
The championship season is still underway, but the data is already showing the following trends:
- One in three high-profile athletes receive abusive messages from people interested in betting.
- High-profile events in the sports betting market increase abuse and intimidation.
- 90% of harassment occurs online or through social media.
- In sports where high stakes are wagered, 15% to 25% of all fraud surrounding the sport is related to gambling.
- During March Madness, Signify covered nearly 1,000 Division I men’s and women’s basketball student-athletes, 64 teams, more than 280 coaches and 120 NCAA game officials.
- Across the Division I men’s and women’s basketball championships, more than 54,000 posts/comments were flagged as potentially abusive or threatening by Signify’s AI and reviewed by human in-house analysts.
- Of these 54,000, 4,000 were identified as abusive or threatening and reported to the relevant social media platforms, with some forwarded to law enforcement.
- More than 540 abusive gambling-related messages, including death threats, were directed to male and female basketball student-athletes.
- Female basketball student-athletes received approximately three times more threats than male basketball student-athletes.
- Student-athletes are not the only ones facing such threats and abuse. Competition officials, administrators, and other employees of competition organizations are subject to harassment in connection with their involvement in their respective competitions.
Insights from the first series of championships covered by this service will be released later and used as a benchmark to monitor future NCAA Championship efforts. Additionally, Signify’s proprietary DM risk management services will be provided to protect student-athletes and officials from the type of abuse Bacot experienced.
Additionally, the NCAA is expanding its programs through e-learning content and EPIC Global Solutions to educate student-athletes not only about how to respond to abusive threats, but also about the risks of sports betting and problem gambling more broadly. . The program was awarded Player Protection Initiative of the Year at his 2024 SBC Summit, a conference and trade show focused on the online betting and gambling industry.
To date, more than 55,000 student-athletes have been educated through hands-on sessions with EPIC Global Solutions, leaving a lasting impact.
“This seminar really changed my perspective on gambling and its seriousness.…It was very educational and informative about the risks, factors, and harms that gambling poses,” said one in an anonymous survey after the EPIC session. said one student-athlete. “It brought a lot of attention to what a problem this really can be. I’ve seen people with gambling addictions and I just didn’t know how to help them.”
Increased education and awareness of the intricacies of sports betting fueled the NCAA’s Draw the Line campaign, which was launched at the beginning of March Madness.
The campaign prioritizes educating student-athletes about the effects of sports betting, while also addressing responsible gambling for everyone who consumes and participates in college sports.
The campaign focuses on social media promotion to reach student-athletes where they are, but also includes a membership toolkit for member schools and conferences to access resources to expand their on-campus education campaigns. I am.
All of these efforts have been developed and implemented to protect the health and mental well-being of our student-athletes and the overall student-athlete experience in a rapidly evolving situation.
If you are a student-athlete or campus administrator and would like to learn more about the resources provided by the NCAA, click here. If you are a student-athlete and live in a state that allows prop bets and would like assistance in removing these bets from the market, please email Governmentrelations@ncaa.org.
