NCAA joins IC360 and Signify Bad Actor Program against bettor abuse
College sport's governing body becomes the first to sign up to a scheme that scans social media for betting-related harassment of athletes, coaches and officials.
The NCAA has signed up to the Bad Actor Program, a joint initiative from sports integrity firm IC360 and data intelligence company Signify Group aimed at identifying online abuse directed at college sport.
The programme monitors social media for harassment targeting athletes, coaches and officials, then passes findings to participating organisations so they can act. That can mean banning an individual from sportsbooks, barring them from attending live events, or referring cases to law enforcement, according to Casino.org News.
NCAA president Charlie Baker said harassment of student-athletes has no place in college sport. "The NCAA is committed to working with stakeholders across the sports betting ecosystem to eradicate this horrific behavior that plagues sports far too often," he said.
The NCAA is the first sports governing body to join the scheme. Fanatics Sportsbook remains the only betting operator currently aligned with it, Casino.org News reported.
The move follows figures from the American Gaming Association showing Americans wagered close to $167 billion through legal sportsbooks in 2025, with operators retaining about $17 billion of that total — a record haul. Casino.org News reported that the scale of bettor losses has coincided with a rise in abuse directed at college athletes by frustrated bettors.
An NCAA survey published in November 2025 found that 36% of Division I men's basketball players had experienced social media abuse linked to betting in the previous year, while 29% had interacted on campus with someone who had bet on their performance. Across Division I men's sports generally, 7% of athletes reported receiving a negative or threatening message from a bettor. The rate among women athletes was lower, at roughly 1%, but not zero.
The Bad Actor Program's own materials describe how such incidents can escalate, noting that what begins as an angry social media post can turn into sustained abuse campaigns, direct threats, and conduct serious enough to warrant referral to law enforcement.
Its approach combines Signify's Threat Matrix, which tracks threats across social platforms, with IC360's compliance infrastructure, allowing intelligence gathered online to be converted into enforcement action by sportsbooks and event organisers.
The partnership builds on the NCAA's work with payment platform Venmo during 2025, set up to identify and disrupt betting-related extortion after student-athletes reported receiving unsolicited payment demands from angry bettors. Venmo operates a dedicated hotline for athletes to report suspected abuse, and accounts found responsible risk closure.
The NCAA has also run a public awareness campaign called Draw the Line, which includes a commercial titled Don't Be a Loser highlighting the impact of bettor harassment on student-athletes.