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It’s been more than six years since the Supreme Court ruling that opened up the door for legal sports betting across the United States, and a new study commissioned by the NCAA has highlighted the dark side of that new era due to the harassment and abuse student-athletes have become subjected to as a result.
In 2018, the Supreme Court opted to strike down the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act that effectively made sports betting illegal across America when it was instituted in 1992, and opportunistic companies didn’t waste any time taking advantage of the ruling as more and more states passed laws permitting the practice within their borders.
As things currently stand, you’re allowed to wager on sports in a grand total of 38 states (along with Washington, D.C.), and while plenty of people have welcomed that change, it’s also been hard to ignore the downsides as advertisements have slowly but surely permeated basically every major league and broadcast.
The athletes at the center of those wagers have also borne the brunt of this change thanks to the many bettors who (predictably) feel like they’re entitled to take out their frustration on players who fail to help their bets hit.
There was already plenty of harassment to go around when fans were emotionally invested, but the fact that you can get financially invested using the phone you can also harness to hop on social media to air your grievances has led to a spike in fairly concerning behavior.
A number of notable names have called attention to an issue that’s been manifested in the form of angry fans sending Venmo requests and vitriolic messages to athletes because their parlay didn’t hit, and now, the NCAA has shed some more light on exactly how big of an issue it’s become.
According to ESPN, the governing body linked up with a data science agency called the Signify Group to conduct a study examining the harassment student-athletes are subjected to online that determined 12% of the abusive messages players receive publicly on social media are sent by “angry sports bettors.”
The study took a look at over 3,000 personal accounts belonging to players as well as those dedicated to teams that participated in a number of championship tournaments in 2024 (including March Madness and the College Football Playoff) and identified 743 posts defined as “abusive or threatening” linked to bets that were placed (it’s worth noting DMs weren’t taken into account).
The majority of those messages (73%) were sent during March Madness, and the study notes female student-athletes received 59% more abuse than their male counterparts.
This shouldn’t necessarily come as a surprise if you’ve been keeping tabs on college athletics in recent years, but it doesn’t make it any less alarming.