The numbers
In October 2024 the NCAA published a study run with Signify Group, a firm that monitors social media for abuse aimed at athletes. It covered public posts during the 2023 to 2024 championship season. The headline findings:
- Abuse tied to sports betting made up about 12 percent of the publicly posted abuse aimed at college athletes. Signify said the true share was higher, because betting-related anger showed up inside messages filed under other categories.
- Sexual abuse was the largest category at 18 percent. Sexist abuse was next at 14 percent.
- March Madness produced the large majority of the betting-related abuse, and women received more of it than men.
A follow-up released in October 2025 reported that the overall volume had fallen by roughly a fifth year over year, and that betting-related abuse during March Madness had fallen further. The NCAA credited its own campaign for part of that decline, which is the NCAA's attribution and not the study's.
What the study did not count
The study looked at public posts. It did not look at direct messages. Signify said the abuse in direct messages would likely be worse, and anyone who has sat with a player after a missed field goal knows that is right. The public post is the one the athlete can ignore. The direct message is the one that names his dorm, his girlfriend, his mother's workplace and the amount the sender lost.
The study also could not count the messages that never reach a feed: the texts to a number that was never supposed to be public, the calls to a parent's phone, the person who shows up. That is where betting harassment turns into a threat assessment, and it is the part no monitoring vendor sees.
Why football operations should care about a basketball number
March Madness dominates the betting-abuse figures because single-elimination games with a point spread produce the sharpest losses. Football has its own version every Saturday: a backdoor cover, a late turnover, a missed extra point. The volume per player is lower than a tournament week and the season is longer, so the exposure accumulates instead of spiking. The kicker, the backup quarterback who came in cold, and the defensive back on the last play are the usual targets. They are also, usually, the players least prepared for it.
Five things to do before the next kickoff
1. Tell them what is coming
A player who has been told, in August, that a stranger who lost money will message him after a loss handles that message differently than one who has not. The athlete briefing exists for this. It takes an hour and it is the single highest-return item on this list.
2. Decide what counts as a threat
Abuse is a message that insults. A threat is a message that names a place, a time, a person, or an intent. Write the distinction down, give it to the players, and give them one person to send a screenshot to. A threat that goes to a position coach at midnight and stops there has not been reported.
3. Shrink what the sender can find
Betting harassment escalates when the sender finds a phone number, an address, a car, or a family member. Most of that is sitting on data-broker sites and on the players' own accounts. An exposure check on the roster, followed by removals, takes that away before it is needed. It is the difference between an ugly inbox and a visit.
4. Document the way police want it
Screenshot with the handle and the date visible. Do not delete. Do not reply. Do not block until the screenshot exists, because blocking can hide the history. Send it to the named person, who keeps a file. When a message crosses into a threat, that file is what campus police and the platform act on. A player who deleted everything in anger has made the next step much harder.
5. Have a number that is answered
The messages arrive at 11 p.m. on a Saturday. The staff member who receives the screenshot needs to know who to call at 11:05. If the department has no answer to that, the response line is the product built for it. If it does, write the answer on the first-hour card and hand it to every player.
What to tell the athletic director
The study gives a department a defensible reason to act before an incident rather than after one. The number to cite is 12 percent and rising inside the categories the study could see, with direct messages uncounted. The cost of the first three steps above is an afternoon. The cost of the fourth is a folder. The cost of not doing them is explained to a board after the fact.
Sources: the NCAA and Signify Group studies published October 2024 and October 2025, as reported by Athletic Business and on ncaa.org. Percentages are of publicly posted abuse and exclude direct messages.