NCAA president urges for federal regulations on sports gambling

ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:

Sports gambling has swept the U.S. since the Supreme Court paved the way for its legalization six years ago. With it has risen the harassment of athletes by gamblers upset their bets didn’t go the way they’d hoped. That’s one reason the president of the NCAA was on Capitol Hill yesterday to urge Congress to enact federal regulations on sports gambling. NPR sports correspondent Becky Sullivan is here. Hi, Becky.

BECKY SULLIVAN, BYLINE: Hi, Ari.

SHAPIRO: How common is it for gamblers to harass athletes over bets that didn’t pan out?

SULLIVAN: Well, in college, it turns out it is shockingly common. So the NCAA has done some internal surveys recently that they say consistently show that 10- to 15% of Division I athletes report having experienced this kind of harassment. So that, just to put it in numbers, is tens of thousands of student athletes, and it’s more frequent among the higher-profile sports like football and basketball that a lot of people are watching on TV.

SHAPIRO: Can you give us a sense of the kind of threats you’re talking about?

SULLIVAN: Yeah, I mean, the harassment - it’s, like - it comes when, you know, maybe players gamblers think aren’t scoring enough or getting enough rebounds - the kinds of things that they have bet on - that the bets go wrong. Sometimes, it takes the form of harassing messages. Sometimes, it escalates. The NCAA says that some athletes have received death threats. They had to put police protection on a team this year during a championship event because of those threats, which come online. They come in person. They come at games. And, of course, the additional worry besides the harassment itself is that it could lead to coercion. And so here’s how NCAA President Charlie Baker put it yesterday speaking to the Senate.

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CHARLIE BAKER: A big part of the abuse involves classmates, schoolmates, you know, friends, who literally talk to them in a way where they basically say, look, you’re my friend. I’m not looking for you to lose a game. I just need you to miss the first two free throws.

SULLIVAN: And so, obviously, that becomes a worry with the integrity of the games that are being played.

SHAPIRO: Sure. So what’s the NCAA urging Congress to do?

SULLIVAN: Well, they’d like to see a ban on what are known as proposition bets when it comes to college sports. So these are wagers on anything besides the final outcome - the final score of a game - so things like how many points a player scores or whether a certain player in a football game will catch a touchdown. These types of bets, prop bets, when it comes to college sports, are legal in about half the states with sports betting. And so Baker and the NCAA want to see them banned for college and amateur athletes nationwide. They’d also like to see some federal action taken on known harassers, basically something that could help ban these people - gamblers who’ve harassed athletes - from betting again in the future, even if they change states or the companies that they’re using to gamble with.

SHAPIRO: And what’s Congress saying?

SULLIVAN: Well, right now, there’s a - the most prominent proposal, I should say, is called the Safe Bet Act, and this would do a lot. It wouldn’t just do this college sports prop bet ban, but it would also place limits on advertising. It would place limits on the kinds of promotions that gambling companies can run. It would require companies to do more to verify income for high-volume betters. So it’s more of a broad-based approach. I will say, though, with the end of this session of Congress just around the corner, this bill is very unlikely to pass at this particular moment. But I expect some other efforts will come up again next year.

SHAPIRO: And do you think it’s likely that Congress will ultimately pass federal regulations?

SULLIVAN: I would say that’s very hard to say. On one hand, there is a growing awareness about the dangers of widespread, easily accessible sports gambling. Studies and surveys show that legalization has led to increases in irresponsible betting behavior, financial problems, like debt and bankruptcy. Young men may be most at risk because they’re most likely to wager, most likely to wager often.

And so you can really hear concerns about these dangers, these risks, on both sides of the aisle. You heard them from Republicans and Democrats both yesterday at the Senate hearing. On the other hand, the gambling industry is largely opposed to federal regulation. They have very deep pockets. So we’ll see how effective they are at blocking this kind of thing.

SHAPIRO: NPR’s Becky Sullivan. Thank you.

SULLIVAN: You’re welcome. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.