NCAA says women student-athletes are increasingly abused over betting

The National Collegiate Athletic Association has been following through on a promise to protect student-athletes, with new evidence coming to bear that women athletes may be subjected to disproportionate, widespread abuse compared to men athletes.

This comes as a part of new data released by the NCAA complied with the help of Signify, an artificial intelligence firm that the association brought on board as a partner to help track, alleviate, and punish abuse of student-athletes as the nation’s caught in the midst of a betting fever.

According to Signify, which was able to track 1,000 Division I men’s and women’s college basketball players spread across 64 teams, 200 coaches and 12 NCAA game officials during the most recent conclusion of March Madness, there were 4,000 instances of abusive comments or threatening messages sent to student-athletes.

Some of these were the vituperations of irate sports fans who had wanted their team to win but found fault in the performance of an individual player.

Others, though, had a darker motive, with abusers vexed that they had lost money on betting "because" of a certain athlete. This worrying trend aside, Signify found out that there was a disproportionate tilt towards women athletes when it came to abuse, with women’s basketball players receiving between 15% and 25% more abusive messages.

The NCAA has argued that this trend is another reason to heed its call and to enact a federal ban on prop bets on college players, a move that has so far been fought on a state-by-state basis and has had NCAA representatives appeal to lawmakers’ locally to enact changes. Many states, including Maryland, Louisiana, Ohio, and Vermont have agreed that something had to be done and did in fact prohibit prop bets on college athletes.

A prop bet is a type of wager that players place on an individual player’s performance. Prop bets have also been tied with the highest instance of fraud in sports betting, with a prominent NBA player becoming the first player in history to be banned over match-fixing abuses.

Yet not everyone agrees that the ban on college prop bets would stop abuse per se. According to Joe Brennan, Executive Director for Prime Sports, prop bets are a distraction and not a root cause of the instances of abuse against players. Meanwhile, harassment remains limited mostly online with 90% of the cases of abuse happening over social media, which highlights the role such platforms could play in helping monitor and limit the harmful language.

Student-athletes mental health has been impacted as a result, argues the NCAA, but the good news is that the association’s partnership with Signify is just a first step as the association wants to send a very clear message – that such instances of abuse would lead to a response that will involve the relevant authorities, from the police to the courts.

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