The NCAA has released findings of a new study that reveals troubling trends in the amount of harassment collegiate student-athletes are subjected to as America embraces sports gambling like never before.
According to the findings, detailed by the NCAA on Tuesday, 36% of Division I men's basketball players reported experiencing social media abuse related to sports betting within the last year, while 29% reported having interacted with a student on campus who had placed a bet on their team. Among football athletes in the Football Bowl Subdivision, 16% reported receiving negative or threatening messages, while 26% reported interacting with a student who had bet on their team.
Overall, 7% of Division I men's sports athletes reported receiving negative or threatening messages from fans who bet on their game, and 9% had experienced a student telling them that they won or lost a bet they placed on them. Rates were much lower among women's sports athletes (1% for both scenarios). As the study's sports-betting questions asked about interactions within the past year, the results were restricted to sophomores and above.
"That happens all the time," former Butler men's basketball student-athlete Pierre Brooks II said after an EPIC Global Solutions session last fall. "Like, if people don't meet their over or under, they always DM me. It's actually pretty common."
The NCAA launched a campaign in 2023 urging state regulators and gambling companies to remove prop bets on college sports from their offerings.
A prop bet, short for proposition bet, is a wager on a specific event or individual performance within a game that does not directly depend on the final outcome or final score.
"States and gaming operators that continue to offer these bets are putting student-athletes and competition integrity at risk," NCAA president Charlie Baker said, per the association's release. "The NCAA runs the largest integrity monitoring program in the country, and we educate hundreds of thousands of student-athletes about the damages of sports betting, but regulators, lawmakers and gaming operators can and should do more."
The NCAA's Student-Athlete Needs, Aspiration and Perspectives study, known as the SNAP study, is a new survey tool for Division I. Distributed via mobile app, the three-minute survey of Division I student-athletes was administered Sept. 30 through Oct. 5. The survey asked 19 questions about current Division I topics, including performance technology, Student-Athlete Advisory Committee resources, fan behavior related to sports betting, and mental wellbeing. Survey participation was voluntary and confidential. Nearly 6,800 students from 153 Division I schools took the survey, according to the NCAA.
In addition to the SNAP study, NCAA research repeated items on social media abuse in the 2025 GOALS Study. Results from that study will be available in January.
The NCAA's Tuesday release notes that enforcement staff members have opened investigations into potential sports betting violations by approximately 30 current or former men's basketball student-athletes. Some of those cases already have been resolved, and 12 student-athletes were permanently banned from NCAA competition.
The NCAA claims to be the only major sports governing body in the U.S. to prohibit commercial partnerships and advertisements with sportsbooks. Moreover, the association reports that it has successfully petitioned four states to eliminate prop bets on college athletes.
