Abuse related to sports bets remains one of the most common ways of online harassment aimed at athletes, coaches and university officials, even when the abuse in general in general decreased this year, according to a study in charge of the NCAA.
Abuses related to bets and matches of parties represented 11% of the almost 4,000 messages indicated by the study. That is approximately double that racial abuse or threats of violence.
Sexual (20%) and sexism (14%) were the most common categories of abuse. The figures were in the same range as the study of the previous year.
In general, online abuse aimed at athletes, coaches and officials decreased 22% year after year, with female basketball experiencing a significant decrease and male basketball experiencing a dramatic increase.
“The NCAA condemns all forms of abuse and harassment online,” said Clint Hangebrauck, general director of Business Risk Management of the NCAA, in a statement to ESPN. “This year's study results suggest that the multiple levels of the NCAA to generate public awareness, defense and training of collaboration relations with third parties is having a positive impact and has improved our ability to combat abuse.”
In March, the NCAA launched a video campaign “Do not be a loser” that was transmitted during the transmissions of male and female basketball tournaments, in addition to pressing so that the states prohibit the props of props in individual university athletes. The NCAA was also associated with the online in line processor this summer in an effort to combat unwanted interactions on the platform.
This was the second year that the NCAA commissioned a study on the abuse of social networks aimed at athletes, coaches and university officials. The study, conducted by Signify Group, an artificial intelligence firm that tracks and analyzes online abuse, monitored seven championship events, including social media accounts of 5,555 athletes, 625 coaches, 466 teams and 26 official NCA channels during academic year 2024-25.
Signify researchers found that 31 people were responsible for atrocious content that justified an investigation. Eight of the people were involved in sports bets, according to NCAA.
Seven abusive messages reached the threshold to be shared with the authorities, according to the study.
