The National Collegiate Athletics Association has released the results of its survey, which asked senior campus compliance officials to give their opinion on sports betting trends.
The survey found that 27% of autonomy schools had to deal with sports betting issues among their athletes or employees within the last year. This is up by 24% from the 3% reported for 2019.
The same number of people (25%) reported that they knew about a student athlete on their campus being harassed by someone with gambling interest online or in person.
The issues are less prevalent in Division II and Division III, where both the first questions returned 3%. There was also no evidence of gambling-related harassment reported in these divisions.
The NCAA’s Managing Director for Enterprise Risk Management, Clint Hangebrauck said, “This survey will help us develop educational materials and e-learning related to sports betting that we plan to distribute to our members later this year.
The survey was accessed 546 times between July and August of 2023 by compliance administrators, each school receiving 500 usable responses. The survey took less than five minutes to complete.
The survey revealed that athletes, coaches, and athletics administrators are receiving some kind of education on sports betting at over 95% of Division 1 schools, and the majority of Division 2 and 3 schools.
In autonomous schools, and in Division I, the way gambling/wagering is taught has changed. There have been increases of 25% and 19% in the amount of education delivered by outside experts or guests.
In general, however, there has been a decline in the use of online modules/courses, fact sheets and video-based education.
The survey was commissioned by the NCAA President Charlie Baker. He added that “Student athletes are being harassed and there are billion-dollar advertising campaigns targeting youth across the nation.” We need to get all the help that we can, including from regulators, sportsbooks and other stakeholders, in order to protect student athletes and the integrity of games.
The NCAA will use the data collected from this survey, along with data from a prior survey on sports betting conducted among college-age respondents to develop the best possible tools to educate schools about sports betting and how to prevent it.
This survey will help us with our sports betting.
Another notable question was ‘Does you school use a sports betting integrity service to monitor matches/games?’ 34% of autonomous schools responded ‘Yes’. This number fell to 13%, 1.1% and 0.0% respectively for Division I (total), II and III.
