Damion Baugh, like the rest of his teammates, boarded the TCU team bus after the Horned Frogs’ second-round loss to Gonzaga, looking quiet and dejected. Their season just ended with an 84-81 loss, their second consecutive NCAA Tournament loss to a top-10 team.
Bo’s mood briefly lifted when the team manager showed him a video of fans at the sportsbook celebrating Bo’s 3-point shot at the buzzer. His shot cut Gonzaga University’s margin of victory from 6 to 3. It doesn’t matter the outcome of the game, but it matters to a growing number of people across the country.
Gonzaga was favored to beat TCU by about four points, so Bo’s shot reversed the score. People who bet on the Bulldogs went from winners to losers in 0.7 seconds. Bo’s Instagram account was flooded with direct messages from angry bettors. he is not alone.
In the five years since legalized sports betting began spreading across the United States, student-athletes have reported regularly receiving abusive messages from gamblers on social media, including death wishes and threats of violence. . FBI agents told ESPN that they believe threats against athletes on social media are a “growing problem,” and in March, a group of college sports officials, state gambling regulators and sportsbook executives He said he held a meeting to discuss how to deal with the problem.
“Universities are stressed about this issue and there are many examples of athletes being abused,” said Mark Potter, director of Epic Risk Management, an international advocacy group dedicated to combating problem gambling. speaks. “At one university, there were over 200 students. [instances]. ”
Bo had never experienced the gambling aspect of social media abuse until he took the shot against Gonzaga. He applauded back on Twitter.
I can’t tell how angry you all are because we played until the final buzzer 🤦🏾♂️ I’m proud of my team and we’ve taught them to fight until the end…. No one told everyone to bet 🤷🏾♂️
— DAM10N Beau (@_swaggyd10_) March 20, 2023
“Everyone who grew up playing sports, you play until the whistle, you play until the game is over,” he said. “People have forgotten that. Saying I shouldn’t have taken the shot is like saying, ‘I don’t care about the game, I just wanted to win money.’ is”
“I think it’s insane to tweet at college athletes,” he added. “I think it’s because people think, ‘He can say anything because he knows he can’t say anything back.’ It’s getting out of hand.”
In 2018 Although the Supreme Court overturned federal laws on sports betting, just over 1% of the U.S. population had access to a legal sportsbook within their state. Five years later, 56% of Americans live in jurisdictions where sports betting is legal. Athletes and experts interviewed by ESPN said that while athletes have faced abuse on social media before, it has escalated as sports betting has expanded, primarily in men’s sports, but the betting market is growing. She said women’s sports are likely to be targeted even more as the situation progresses.
On Jan. 17, just 16 days after Ohio State launched its sports betting market, Dayton men’s basketball coach Anthony Grant spoke publicly about his team’s experience with social media abuse by gamblers.
“Some of the recently enacted legislation, to me, could really change the face of college sports,” Grant told reporters. “And it disgusts me when people promote themselves and attack children for their own ends.”
In 2019, 23-year-old gambler Benjamin Patz sent a threatening direct message from an anonymous account to a Pepperdine basketball player saying, “I’m going to slit your throat with a blunt knife,” according to court records. “Your whole family will be decapitated and burned alive.” “Watch your back, there’s a dead man walking around.” According to court records, Patz was upset over the loss of his bet. They may have been trying to influence an upcoming event that they had placed or bet on. He pleaded guilty to one count of transmitting threats in interstate or foreign commerce and was sentenced to 36 months of probation.
A Furman men’s basketball player, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said he receives abusive messages on social media “all the time,” even after a win, “if we don’t cover the spread.” He said the abuse escalated further when the match was broadcast on national television.
“People say, ‘You guys suck, you’re a failure,’ ‘You can’t even make a layup and you lost so much money,’ ‘Your mother should have swallowed you.’ “Some messages are much worse than others,” he said. “Honestly, this is a fairly new thing. I think it’s become even more so in the past year. I know people have been betting for a while, but now that it’s legalized, it’s It’s increasing even more.”
Adam Flagler, a senior security guard at Baylor who is Black, said the abusive direct messages he received on Instagram often included racial slurs, including the N-word.
“I’m not proud to say that I’ve experienced angry messages, but I have,” Flagler told ESPN. “I’ve had my life threatened. A lot of people told me I should never play basketball again and said things about my mom. Everything they felt gets to me.”
Flagler said his girlfriend deleted most of the messages she sent him, but she shared one with ESPN that included a racial slur and ended with, “Mom, I wish you were dead.” .
March 7th, A group of about 125 college sports officials, state gaming regulators and sportsbook executives met to discuss potential ways to combat this type of harassment.
The hour-long conference call began with an anecdote about a backup guard who missed a free throw in the second half that would have covered a double-digit deficit in a West Coast Conference basketball game. The guard, who played only because the game was a blowout loss, subsequently received death threats on social media from someone authorities believed to be a gambler.
Gloria Nevarez, then WCC commissioner, told ESPN that the conference was put on “high alert” after being notified of the threat. She contacted the watchdog organization US Integrity and eventually the FBI, according to Nevarez, who tracked the perpetrator down the East Coast and confronted him directly, according to Nevarez.
“It brought us a huge sense of relief,” Nevarez, now the Mountain West Conference commissioner, told ESPN about the resolution of the incident.
The rise in cases prompted U.S. Integrity President Matt Holt to organize a conference call, and the enthusiastic response prompted him to say that this is a rare issue that unites all aspects of the sports and gambling industries. He said he recognized it.
“Those harassing student-athletes on the basis of gambling have clearly indicated that they have a gambling problem and should seek help and proactively visit legal gambling sites.” They should not continue to participate,” said Casey Clark, executive vice president of American. The Gaming Association is a trade association representing the casino industry based in Washington, DC.
Keith White, executive director of the National Council on Problem Gambling, said not everyone who sends social media abuse to athletes has a gambling problem, but there is “significant overlap”. Ta.
“Most people who have gambling problems also have substance abuse or mental health disorders,” White said. “All of these things come together and social media facilitates that, but so does the culture that is promoted even by people in the sports betting community.”
Mr Holt said the Coalition government would establish regional groups and begin urging MPs to take action on the issue. Ohio is considering regulations that would ban bettors found to have harassed athletes from betting at state-licensed sportsbooks. In response to Dayton coach Grant’s comments, Ohio Governor Mike DeWine, a longtime Flyers fan, included language in his state budget that would make gambling-related threats against athletes a crime. West Virginia also introduced legislation this year aimed at combating intimidation of athletes.
“There are some scumbags who somehow believe that the people in the arena are there to make money for them,” said Matt Schuler, executive director of the Ohio Casino Authority. It’s the same,” he said. commission.
According to the FBI, social media abuse is a crime when it involves an “imminent threat to life” or a threat to the “well-being of the athlete or his or her family.”
“When these and other factors come together, it’s time to cross the line between criticism and illegality,” FBI Supervisory Special Agent Beto Quiroga told ESPN.
Over the past five years, gambling has infiltrated the American sports world. There are now legal betting markets in 33 states, and sportsbooks have dramatically increased their advertising. In 2019, the first full year of expanded sports betting regulations, sportsbook brands spent $21.4 million on national TV commercials. In 2022, that number rose to $314.6 million, according to data from iSpot, a company that measures TV advertising and viewership.
The NCAA has distanced itself from gambling even more than the professional sports leagues, banning sportsbooks from advertising during broadcasts. It also requires Division I universities to have on-campus mental health resources and encourages players who experience abuse on social media to alert their coaches. However, the impact of the new landscape is still being felt.
Senior guard Connor McCaffery, who plays for his father, Iowa coach Fran McCaffery, is working with international sports data and integrity watchdog Sportradar to encourage student-athletes to protect their mental health. I encourage you to do so. He sought counseling to deal with the abuse on social media. “It’s very prevalent,” he said. “And 100 percent, it’s increased over the last year or two.”
Sportradar’s investigative unit, led by a former British military intelligence officer, tracked down social media trolls in the UK and reported them to law enforcement. The group is also trying to address the issue in the United States, but officials have noted differences in the rhetoric.
Jim Brown, a former NCAA official who now heads Sportradar’s integrity and athlete welfare services in North America, said social media abuse is unique to gambling overseas, in more mature gambling markets than in the United States. He said that there is almost no such thing.
“Online sports betting harassment is less prevalent internationally,” Brown said. “I’m curious as to why we’re seeing that in North America.”
Experts believe a new wave of bettors may struggle to withstand the emotional swings caused by gambling and are resorting to lashing out at athletes on social media. This is not necessarily a new phenomenon, but as the gambling market grows, “the reality is things are going to get worse,” Potter said.
ESPN reporter Jeff Borzello and independent journalist Olivia Robinson contributed to this report.