NCAA joins Bad Actor Program to tackle harassment of athletes by sports bettors

The NCAA is joining the Bad Actor Program, an initiative from sports integrity and data intelligence firms IC360 and Signify Group designed to identify and address online abuse targeted at college athletics. The NCAA is the first sports governing body to engage in the Bad Actor Program. To date, Fanatics Sportsbook is the only sports betting entity to align with the harassment detection and response system.

NCAA President Charlie Baker says online harassment from sports bettors directed at student-athletes, coaches, and referees remains rampant across college athletics. “Athlete harassment has no place in college sports,” said Baker. He added: “The NCAA is committed to working with stakeholders across the sports betting ecosystem to eradicate this horrific behavior that plagues sports far too often.”

The Bad Actor Program scrubs social media for abusive online behavior directed at those involved with college sports. It provides participating organizations with information that can be used to support accountability, including banning individuals from sportsbooks and barring them from live events. The program combines Signify’s Threat Matrix, which detects threats across social media, with IC360’s compliance infrastructure.

The American Gaming Association says sports bettors in the U.S. risked almost $167 billion on sports through legal sportsbooks in 2025. Oddsmakers kept about $17 billion of the bets, a record haul for the books.

In November 2025, the NCAA released a survey that found 36% of Division I men’s basketball student-athletes experienced social media abuse related to sports betting within the last year. In the same survey, 29% interacted with a student on campus who had placed a bet on their play. Overall, 7% of Division I men’s sports athletes reported fielding a negative or threatening message from a sports bettor, compared with about 1% of all female athletes.

The partnership follows the NCAA’s collaboration with Venmo in 2025 to identify and disrupt betting-related extortion. Student-athletes have repeatedly relayed to the NCAA that they are receiving unsolicited payment demands from enraged bettors. Venmo offers a dedicated hotline for student-athletes to report potential cases of abuse on the peer-to-peer payment platform. The NCAA has also invested in a campaign called Draw the Line, a public service announcement featuring a commercial called Don’t Be a Loser.