The Sports Betting Madness on College Campuses

Chapters

0:00 - Sports Betting Is Suddenly Everywhere

2:10 - The Turning Point That Drove a Gambling Boom

3:11 - Scandals Threaten the Integrity of Games

3:53 - Why ‘Prop Bets’ Pose Threats for Athletes

4:44 - The NCAA’s Role and Introducing Our Guests

5:45 - Laying Out the Landscape of College Betting

8:37 - How Widespread Are Problems Related to Sports Betting?

12:07 - Why College Presidents Should Be Concerned About Gambling

15:56 - Which Sports or Schools Face the Biggest Impact of Sports Betting?

20:04 - Should Student Athletes Be Allowed to Bet on Pro Sports?

22:51 - What Should Colleges Do About Sports Betting?

25:15 - What Is the NCAA Doing to Protect Student Athletes?

29:40 - How NCAA Collaborates With Betting Companies

33:52 - What’s Next for Sports Betting?

36:42 - A Wake-Up Call to the Issue of Sports Betting

40:53 - Sports Betting Touches Many Parts of Campus

Transcript

Clint Hangebrauck

And so what we saw out of that study was about 60% of 18 to 22-year-olds are engaging in sports betting. And it's even actually higher rates when you get on a college campus, whereas closer to two thirds of the respondents were engaging in sports betting.

So I think the bumper sticker there is that college kids are engaging in high rates in sports betting. A lot of the data that we see is that it's sort of a learned behavior for them at a very young age, too, where they're engaging in sports betting at the high school level or even before that when you get into elementary school.

You know, I hate to be too alarmist with this, but I do think this could be the next big public health crisis that we're facing as a country and particularly within higher ed.

Jeff Selingo

That was Clint Hangebrauk from the NCAA. Sports betting is often framed as a sports issue, but on college campuses, it's much bigger than that. And it's quickly becoming a student health issue given how widespread betting is among young people.

Michael Horn

And it's one we do not talk about as often as, say, alcohol, Jeff. And at the same time, it raises new concerns about the safety of student athletes and the integrity of the games themselves.

So how should colleges think about this new betting ecosystem?

That's ahead on this episode of Future U.

Sponsor

This episode of Future U is sponsored by Ascendium, a mission-driven nonprofit committed to improving learning and training systems to better serve learners from low-income backgrounds. For more information, visit ascendiumphilanthropy.org. Subscribe to Future U wherever you get your podcasts. And if you enjoy the show, share it with your friends so others can discover the conversations we're having about higher education.

Michael Horn

I'm Michael Horn.

Jeff Selingo

And I'm Jeff Selingo.

If you don't follow sports closely, the conversation around sports betting in the United States might feel like it appeared overnight.

But in reality, we're in the middle of one of the biggest shifts in the sports landscape in decades, Michael.

And it has real implications for colleges and universities.

Michael Horn

So to set the table, let's go back to 2018 first. The real turning point, I think, in all this came when the U.S. Supreme Court struck down a federal law known as PASPA, the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act. It had essentially banned sports betting across most of the country, and once it was overturned, states were free to legalize betting on sports.

Fast forward to today, and nearly 40 states and Washington D.C. Allow some form of sports betting. And the result is a massive new ecosystem. Apps, sports books, data companies, and betting markets built around games that, Jeff, millions of people are already watching.

Jeff Selingo

And with that growth has come a series of high-profile scandals that have raised new questions about integrity. You know, just this past year, federal investigators uncovered a scheme involving college basketball games where gamblers allegedly tried to influence outcomes by targeting players at smaller programs.

Around the same time, professional sports were dealing with their own issues. The NBA banned a player after an investigation found he had manipulated parts of games tied to betting markets. And, of course, Major League Baseball suspended several players for betting violations of its rules. You know, these cases have brought new attention to how sports betting works and how easily certain kinds of bets can create pressures on athletes.

Michael Horn

Yeah. And, Jeff, a prime example of that is what's called a 'prop bet.' It's short for proposition bet. And instead of betting on, say, who wins the game that most of us think about, prop bets focus on specific events inside of the game. So how many rebounds will a particular player get in basketball? Who scores the first touchdown? Or even whether a pitcher will throw a strike or a ball on a certain pitch in a certain inning.

Those bets can sometimes hinge on a single play or performance, and that matters because the athletes, especially college athletes, are incredibly accessible. They're much more accessible than professionals. Right? They live in dorms. They go to class. And, of course, like other athletes, they interact with fans and bettors on social media.

Jeff Selingo

Yeah, Michael. That brings us to the NCAA rules. And under NCAA bylaws, student athletes, coaches, and many athletics staff members are considered what are called prohibited bettors. That means they're not allowed to wager on sports at all, not on their own games, not on other college games, and not even on professional sports. But as sports betting becomes more widespread and more normalized among young people, the challenges for colleges are just growing so rapidly. So today, we wanted to step back and talk about how this new betting ecosystem works, what risks it carries for campuses, and what university leaders really need to understand about it.

And to do that, we're joined by two people who deal with these issues every day at the NCAA. Mark Hicks is managing director of enforcement, and Clint Hangebrauck is managing director of enterprise risk management.

Mark and Clint, welcome to Future U.

Mark Hicks

Thank you. It's good to be here.

Clint Hangebrauck

Great to be here.

Jeff Selingo

So, Mark and Clint, I just wanna start with kind of a scene setter here, because we talk a lot about college betting, and betting in college by college students.

Are we talking students that are betting on pro sports, students that are betting on college sports? Are we talking about college athletes betting on pro sports or their own sports or other college sports?

Like, could you just lay out the scene when we talk about this big headline betting by college students.

Clint Hangebrauck

So I'll rewind back to 2018 with PASBA overturning, with the Supreme Court overturning PASBA, which really opened the door for legalized sports betting in America today. So now we're in a position where 39 states plus Washington DC have legalized sports betting.

But sort of the betting ecosystem from our vantage point is broader than just legalized sports betting. You still have campus bookies that exist and offshore books and things of that nature. You have daily fantasy. You have now sport prediction markets, which sort of almost mimic, like, stock trading and financial markets.

This was handed down to us by our board of governors, but we definitely believe in when it comes to this area, is that, first and foremost, we wanna protect the competition integrity of NCAA contests from any sort of integrity issues that would arise as it relates to sports betting schemes and things of that nature.

But then secondly, and of equal importance, if not more so, is promoting the well-being of our student athletes. And we really break that down into two different lenses that we look at. One is that we're very concerned around student athletes potentially developing problematic gambling behaviors related to sports betting.

There's sort of this paradox that exists that what makes student athletes great at sports makes them not very great when it comes to looking at it from a gambling standpoint. You know, problematic gamblers oftentimes are hypercompetitive. They hate to lose. They chase their losses. They want a rush of adrenaline and things of that nature. So it's really dangerous when you look at it through the lens of our student athletes and how they're wired.

But then secondly, from a well-being standpoint, we're really concerned around the harassment that's directed at student athletes from angry sports bettors.

Mark Hicks

When it comes to problematic gambling behavior, you're really looking at, you know, it's a generational issue. It's the campus at large. And if I'm a president of a university, I'm worried about this and how it affects the entire student body.

Again, that's not necessarily our role here, but that would be another bucket to consider is just, 'What's that impact on campus generally, even for the non-athlete?' Right?

Jeff Selingo

You know, point-shaving allegations, bribery, rules violations. How widespread is this among college sports? Are there, you know, actual numbers? How many sports betting violations are you seeing, and is that number growing?

And Mark, probably as the NCAA's managing director of enforcement, I'm guessing you have the best sense of this.

Mark Hicks

Yeah. I'm well, first of all, I think I would put, you know, put betting issues in two categories.

In one, have integrity concerns is what you've mentioned, and I'll reflect on that.

But to the second part of your question about scope and different things we're seeing, we also have issues around what we call 'prohibited bettor.' So the NCAA has a bylaw that makes it impermissible to engage in betting, and you often have technical violations of that rule, which may not have anything about contest manipulation or anything like that.

So it'll be important today as we discuss this topic that we keep things separate in those buckets.

But to the integrity concerns, we certainly have seen a rise in those issues over the last three years. This past year and most recently, you've seen federal indictments around a scheme aimed at kinda infiltrating college basketball around some of the lower to mid-major programs, maybe programs they weren't doing as well. Maybe not have some of the resources that larger schools employ.

And it is a pretty big scheme. If you look at historical sports betting schemes in The U.S., it probably ranks up there as the biggest if not the second biggest. You can go back to the 1950s. There was one that involved 30 schools and types of things like that. So certainly, this one particular issue is very problematic.

And then we also saw some other cases that don't get a lot of press, necessarily, but where you have individual players not connected to these federal cases at all, but individual athletes betting on themselves to underperform, engaging actually platforms in daily fantasy, sharing information amongst teammates and former teammates that have transferred on, and so you have that.

And then we actually had an issue three years ago with a head baseball coach that was involved in providing inside information to a better about moves that were gonna potentially impact the game and would change the betting lines, if you will.

So in the last three years, we've seen several. Again, maybe that's the system working and and helping identify and catch those issues.

So historically, if you look back to like the 1950s until today, there have been close to 20 sports betting integrity issues that have involved law enforcement during that time period. Not proud of that for our industry or our enterprise, But the reality is we have faced serious integrity issues over the years. I think it averages close to about one every four years. And, you know, obviously, you might have like this three years in a row, skews it from how often, but, but it's not new territory.

So is it happening more? To your point, I don't think we know.

Jeff Selingo

So, Clint, you know, most college presidents are dealing with 100 competing priorities in any given week, any given month. Could you make the case about why sports betting should be kind of near the top of that list right now? How big of a risk is this for higher education and colleges in general?

Clint Hangebrauck

Yeah. It's a great question, and I think it's a significant risk for our membership, our higher education institutions. You know, shortly after president [Charlie] Baker came to the NCAA in 2023, You all probably know he was the governor of Massachusetts before he came to the NCAA. So he had actually just went through the legalization of sports betting within the state of Massachusetts. And so he brought to the NCAA a lot of expertise in this area, but it was something that he was immediately concerned about.

So one of the first things that he did was commission a study that really focused on the prevalence of sports betting amongst the 18 to 22-year-old demographic. So it wasn't necessarily focused on student athletes, but really just more all young people in the 18 to 22-year-old age range, but it did have a concentration on individuals in that age range that were attending higher education institutions.

And one of the things that was alarming to us that I think should be alarming to presidents as well is that the data really didn't differentiate when you looked across states that had legalized sports betting versus states that didn't. So we're now in a position where 39 states plus the District Of Columbia have legalized sports betting. But even as we looked in states like Texas and California and Alabama, Utah, other states that don't have legalized sports betting, there were still similar prevalence rates of college kids engaging in sports betting.

The data also didn't differentiate between those who were underage when it comes to legalized sports betting versus those who are not. So similar prevalence of 18 to 20-year-olds versus 21 to 22-year-olds.

So I think the bumper sticker there is that college kids are engaging in high rates in sports betting. A lot of the data that we see is that it's sort of a learned behavior for them at a very young age, too, where they're engaging in sports betting at the high school level, or even before that when you get into elementary school.

There's also some data out there that suggests college-age individuals are three times more likely to engage in problematic gambling behaviors. So things where you're regularly engaging in betting, you might be losing, you know, $500 or more in a given day. Those sorts of higher-risk behaviors are much more prevalent amongst college-age individuals.

I think, too, one of the things that really concerned us is a lot of the problematic gambling behaviors. They oftentimes coexist with other disordered behaviors, things such as sleeplessness, binge drinking, drug use, anxiety and depression, which is all obviously behaviors that are very prevalent amongst college-age individuals as well.

So, you know, I hate to be too alarmist with this, but I do think this could be the next big public health crisis that we're facing as a country, and particularly within higher ed. So I hope it's a topic that college presidents are really focused on.

Michael Horn

Well, it's interesting out of that right now. We've painted two sides, right, of these potential problems, if you will.

I'm curious, given the national scope of this, even if you're in a state where you don't see these, specific legalization and so forth, are there specific sports or divisions perhaps where you're seeing the most problems on either side of this coin, or is this really spread across the board, if you will?

I'd be curious for both of your takes on this.

Mark Hicks

There are no boundaries to where these types of things exist.

From the integrity side though, we definitely see it in Division I. You know, there are much more markets on the Division I type contest than there are in D-II and D-III.

Some may be surprised though, for your D-II and D-III listeners, is that from time to time there are D-II and D-III markets, primarily around championships, and those are all through regulated markets. There are plenty of opportunities to bet on D-II and D-III on offshore markets. Even sometimes high school games, marquee high school games will be offered on offshore markets, or offshore platforms.

So it's certainly widespread, but certainly concentrated on Division I.

Clint Hangebrauck

The highest rates of betting actually exist in D-III, with over 30% of male D-III student athletes engaging in sports betting. That number goes down fairly significantly in Division II to closer to 20%, and then goes down even significantly more in Division I closer to 10%.

Jeff Selingo

And so, Clint, why is that? And are there particular sports that are more problematic?

Clint Hangebrauck

Yeah. Some of the highest sports that we've seen, Division III golfers ... Men's golfers was the highest rates, and then you get into sports like baseball and basketball. And I think it's sort of cultural sometimes within the sport.

I also think it shows some educational awareness and lacking that maybe exists at the Division III level versus Division I. We see this is an area they not only educate on the rules, but they educate on some of the dangers associated with sports betting, some of the health and wellness consequences, things like that, where we know our Division III institutions are more constrained. So maybe it's only one touchpoint that student athletes are having from an educational standpoint each year, and it's really focused on more about, like, abstinence, don't bet on it type NCAA rules messaging.

Where we've really advocated to, you know, educate student athletes on the broader dangers as it relates to sports betting from, you know, financial consequences to relationship consequences to performance consequences, and things of that nature that I think, you know, resonate more and hopefully reduce that prevalence of student athletes engaging in betting. But it's somewhere like 80% to 90% of Division III institutions are in states with legalized sports betting and closer to 70% where you have online betting.

So that's part of probably the higher prevalence rates that we see in Division III is that where those institutions are at, by a large majority, you have legalized sports betting in those states.

Mark Hicks

And even to the debate on what our rules should be and whether that should be encompassing the prohibition on betting on pro sports or not. I think geographically or geographics plays an issue in that debate. Right?

Sports betting is one of those topics that strikes at people's fundamental beliefs. It's an emotional topic. And so when you look at the debate around whether we should be more restrictive or less restricted around sports betting, it really draws on where people live, where they're from, whether their state has legalized sports betting, again, what their personal belief systems are.

It's just a really hotly-debated topic that you can almost draw lines around where sports is legalized versus where it's not.

Jeff Selingo

And I wanna clarify here because, you know, we keep talking about sports betting here. So some of this has been on professional sports as well. And I know that two thirds of Division I member schools had voted to rescind a previously approved rule that would have allowed student athletes and athletic department staff members to legally participate in sports betting on professional sports only.

Can you talk about what happened there?

Clint Hangebrauck

Yeah. There's a lot of details to it, so I'll try to keep it pretty high level.

But essentially, that's a rule that is what we call common legislation, so it's the same across all three NCAA divisions. And so really, it went through all the governance channels in all three divisions. And ultimately, the sort of entirety of the membership, if you will, through our governance processes, as you referenced, voted in favor of rescinding the rule against student athletes engaging in pro sports.

And, you know, Mark and I were just sort of conscientious observers to that process. And I think in our private moments and debates, like, we always realized it's a really tough call. There's pros and cons, advantages and disadvantages to both sides.

I think on the side of, you know, liberalizing and legalizing student athletes engaging in pro sports betting, the idea was, you know, it's a legal activity. It doesn't ultimately, on the surface, at least compromise the integrity of our competitions for a student athlete to bet on the NFL or the NBA or something of that nature. And there were some very, like, health and safety reasons to do this, where if a student athlete was struggling with betting, hopefully, they would be more willing to come forward without fear of NCAA consequences associated with coming forward to seek help. So that was kind of the advantage.

But I think on the other side, it's like, you know, it could cause more betting, which could lead to more integrity issues. And just generally, like, is it the right message to send to student athletes to, you know, sort of say, like, 'It's okay to be engaging in sports betting and what consequences come along with that.' But I think what really changed things is sort of in the middle of all this changing or actually getting towards the tail end of it, you started to see some of these federal cases come out, not on the college side, but on the professional side with the NBA situation and what they dealt with.

And then shortly after that, the MLB had their own integrity issue. And it was just kind of a wake-up call for membership to say, you know, 'Do we really wanna do this right now?' And that's, I think, ultimately what turned the tide on rescinding that rule change.

Michael Horn

Clint, I wanna stay on one thing there, because you've sort of talked about the difference also between D-III schools and the betting prevalence versus D-I and so forth.

It raises the question, I think, of, 'What does handling this well actually look like?' Right? What are the most effective things that colleges can, should be doing beyond sort of checking the compliance box?

Do you have examples or advice, for those presidents and others listening?

Clint Hangebrauck

I would say for us, it starts with, and I think this is where it should start on campuses, with just, 'You can't educate enough in this area.' To tell student athletes, tell students, like, you know, there's a real, like, what I call sort of the gambler's fallacy that exists within sports betting on college campuses where, you know, we could do this, and it's relatively harmless. And, you know, if we start to lose, the best way to to stop losing is just to keep betting and betting and betting more. And ultimately, we may climb out of the hole that we're in. And that just doesn't exist.

There's also just kind of a misperception that in some of the surveys that we've done, over 50% of college students believe that sports betting is an easy way to make money. And the reality is only about 4% of individuals engaging in betting make money over time.

So I just go back to like, you can't educate enough in this area, and that's really the key to preventing sports betting issues from happening. You know, one of the things that we're really trying to work on right now is I think there's a significant gap in licensed mental health professionals and other sort of health and safety campus, individuals that exist on campus, where historically, they've had training in areas such as drug and alcohol prevention. But this whole area of gambling is just so new, especially the, you know, sports betting with how much it's exploded over the last several years.

Michael Horn

Yeah, the explosion and prevalence of it.

Clint Hangebrauck

Yes. So really trying to arm those people on campus that are supporting students, that are supporting student athletes, with understanding the red flags associated with sports betting, how to have those conversations, and how to provide support on campus.

So those are a few of the things that I would point to that I think, you know, could really help on college campuses.

Michael Horn

Well, so, Mark, part of this, right, is also supporting the athletes, right, who are reportedly being harassed. Sometimes we hear aggressively by bettors who lost money on their games. Right?

When the better wins, they're the genius, but when they lose, it's the college athlete's fault all of a sudden.

How serious is this problem from what you guys are learning and what's being done to protect athletes on that side of it?

Mark Hicks

You know, it's an area of focus for us for sure. President Baker has brought that to the attention, I think, not only to the NCAA community, but also just just nationally that this is a big problem.

And we do hear that both from a harassment standpoint, student athletes are contacted, but also being asked for inside information, being asked to help someone win a bet. Right? And unlike the professional ranks, college student athletes live in dorms. They live in apartment complexes. They go to class with colleagues every day, and it's probably a much more available.

Michael Horn

Right. They're totally accessible to those people.

Mark Hicks

Exactly. And so, you know, I think that, again, Clint can talk about numbers, but I think that's the reality that a lot of these young people face. So.

Clint Hangebrauck

Yeah. I would just add one of the things, again, shortly after President Baker came on board, that he quickly started to hear from student athletes, like, he was asking questions, 'What are some of the biggest challenges you're facing?' And a lot of them brought up that point that just with this explosion of sports betting, we constantly have noise around our performance and how it related to betting markets to harassment and abuse that they're receiving on social media.

So starting in 2023, we partnered with a company called Signify, and Signify specializes in deploying artificial intelligence across social media platforms to identify abuse directed at championship participants. And so we focus on some of those, like, higher-profile championships where you do have betting markets. But what we've seen is about 20% of the abuse that student athletes receive does relate back to sports betting.

And there's a lot of work that we've done in that space to try to, like, cut the head off the snake because the biggest challenge that's creating this harassment is the prop bets that exist on individual athletes and their performance. And so across states ...

Michael Horn

I mean, explain to the listeners. It could be extremely subtle, like a pitch in the fifth inning of a baseball game, right? Like, it's really hard to monitor these, it seems.

Clint Hangebrauck

Yeah. It's hard to monitor, but it's, yeah, like the center on your basketball team. How many rebounds are they gonna get in a game? Who's gonna make the first free throw in a basketball game? Who's gonna, you know, make the first touchdown in a football game? Things like that.

So they're not only problematic from an integrity standpoint, because they're easier to fix those, you know, just a part of a contest instead of the whole contest.

But in our view, when you're putting specific student athletes' names and sometimes their imagery on a bet, you're just putting a target on their back for harassment. So we've certainly seen that a lot of the harassment that is directed at student athletes manifests from angry bettors who are mad that they lost a bet.

We've done a lot of, like, collaboration with the social media companies. And actually, one of the things that we started hearing more over the last couple years was on Venmo, that there was a lot of student athletes after games that would get payment requests from angry betters who cost me $10,000 on my bet, 'Pay up, or or suffer the consequences.' So, about a year ago, we announced a collaborative effort with Venmo where the now there's a direct reporting mechanism for student athletes to report abuse to them, and they handle that very timely. And we've had a lot of student athletes that have taken advantage of that opportunity. But they're also able to put almost what I described as like a digital force field around student athletes.

So if you see a big moment, the last play in a March Madness game, or the last play in a college football game, that it seems like it could trigger a lot of those payment requests from angry betters. They're essentially blocking those requests on the front end. So we're really happy to have that collaboration in place and are looking for additional opportunities that are similar to that.

Jeff Selingo

So let's talk about those collaborations for a second. So what other kind of collaborations do you have? Because as you say, the technology now is so much better where you could track a lot of this stuff going on. You mentioned Venmo. You mentioned the social media companies. What other kind of partnerships do you have, particularly with all the different betting companies?

Mark Hicks

We do have an open line of communication with many of the operators, and they have compliance programs just like institutions do, right?

And so they're not commercial agreements, they're not necessarily formal agreements, but we do you know, accept information. When they've found somebody who has been engaging in sports betting, on their platform, oftentimes which is maybe illegal in a state. Each state has different laws around who can bet. A lot of times athletes are prohibited from that, referees, staff, etcetera. So we'll get reports from them, and we will follow-up with obtaining data.

So we've, again, kept an open line of communication with those operators, and they're a big part of helping ensure that we keep integrity in our sport. But they're short of formal agreements, so we don't have like the pro leagues, a lot of them have AGOs where they're in commercial agreements and they have ... which end up being marketing and also an agreement to help in investigations. Ours are more state commission, gaming commission driven, but also just building relationships with those operators who want to be a part of the solution, not just hands off when it comes to integrity or prohibited bettors.

First of all, we refer to this as the sports betting ecosystem.

Jeff Selingo

Okay.

Mark Hicks

And it's post 2018, and it's what's emerged as you've seen legalization of sports betting move across the country. And a couple entities that fit into that ecosystem, one would be the integrity monitors.

And so there are companies who specialize in evaluating betting lines and the movement of those lines throughout the days before the event up until the event, and maybe even analyzing betting lines relevant to the outcome of a game. And we have a contractual partner with Sport Radar who does that work for us. We also have an open line of communications with other integrity monitors like IC360 and IBIA. So we're able to compare these trends in a micro level of literally up until the time the contest happens to see if we're seeing odd line movements. So you have that, and that's an important function. They're often pointing to smoke if they think something's happening. They can alert us to those things.

The other thing that plays into that is you have the operators themselves, and they're kind of the first line of defense. They actually see the actual bets. So they know if, let's say, Clint is someone who historically bets $50 to $100 bucks a game, all of a sudden comes in and drops $10,000 on a specific prop bet, that's gonna stick out to them. They're gonna know, like, 'Wait a minute. Like, that this is not, you know, this is not normal.’

They may then report that to the gaming commission, the state-led gaming commission, or even to the integrity monitor where there's an exchange of information to say, 'Hey, we've got some suspicious stuff going on here.'

Lastly, then that information ultimately will get, like, to us. Let's say it's an NCAA issue, which is where then our role comes in in investigating those concerns. So integrity monitors aren't investigative units. Gaming commissions have some authority to do that. Some have law enforcement operations, some don't.

But then it becomes inherent in this ecosystem to share appropriate information so that investigations can happen. Sometimes federal law enforcement gets involved and sometimes they don't. It just, you know, it just depends. But that's kind of the ecosystem in a microcosm.

Jeff Selingo

So where do you see this all going in the next two or three years?

Are we, Mark, and let's start with you, are we ahead of this, behind it, or maybe we just don't know? Maybe there's this big scandal out there that we just don't know about yet.

Mark Hicks

History tells us that we're gonna have additional problems down the road, and that's just indicative of society perhaps. Right? There's going to be someone looking to game the system to benefit financially.

So first of all, I think we have to remain vigilant because I don't see this as being the end. As the betting market matures here in The U.S., these ecosystems that we keep referring to, working in concert to root out integrity matters and things like that, are gonna continue to get better.

So we're well positioned to deal with the issues much more than we were in 2018 and so I expect us to continue to grow and be more armed with the ability to combat integrity concerns.

Clint Hangebrauck

Yeah, from my vantage point, I'll use a line that Charlie Baker, our president, uses a lot. If you looked at this as a baseball analogy, I think we're in the first inning of a nine inning game here. So, you know, betting is still very, very new, especially from a regulated betting standpoint within this country. And so, you know, I think there's still a lot of ways for us to evolve and get stronger in this space.

I certainly hope it's something that college presidents and other folks in the higher education ecosystem are really focused on this topic and how to prevent harms at the college level.

Jeff Selingo

Well, Mark and Clint, thank you again. I think this is an issue that has been below the surface for a long time, and I'm glad that you're able to bring some of your thoughts and expertise to Future U, and we appreciate your time today.

Sponsor

This episode of Future U is sponsored by Ascendium, a mission-driven non profit committed to improving learning and training systems to better serve learners from low-income backgrounds. Ascendium envisions a world where low-income learners succeed in postsecondary education and workforce training as paths to upward mobility. Ascendium's grantees are removing systemic barriers and helping to build evidence about what works, so learners can achieve their career goals. For more information, visit ascendiumphilanthropy.org.

Jeff Selingo

So thank you, Mark and Clint, for joining us today.

And, you know, Michael, I wanna bring you in as we close out the episode here to hear what some of your big takeaways were from that fascinating conversation.

Michael Horn

Yeah. Well, I'll say two things. Right?

Number one, what I took away from this conversation that I think I learned, Jeff, or I hadn't thought deeply about was the impact on everyone else at the campus in terms of their mental health and sort of the addiction of betting. And I just had like, I thought a lot about the pressure on the student athletes and all the integrity issues for the games, and I wanna come back to that in a moment.

But, like, the big thing for me, Jeff, was the mental health picture, and, you know, we said it up front. We talk about alcohol. We talk about other issues. We talk a lot about social media. We talk a lot about AI companionship as an emerging thing. This is a big part of it, and potentially just as destructive and maybe on you know, it's both, like, antisocial in some ways, Jeff, and it has repercussions on other humans potentially as well if you get really angry around it.

So it just ... A whole set of the population of college campuses that it feels like is a much bigger deal if I'm a college president now listening that I had not appreciated before. What about you?

Jeff Selingo

Yeah. In some ways, similar, Michael. As you know, I kinda pushed us to do this episode, and I was kind of overwhelmed by how big this issue really is for how much probably we, me and you, and everybody in higher ed has been paying attention to it. And so a couple of things that really struck me.

One is that this is not just a problem at Division I. I think often we think of who's betting on sports, what are those sports, those sports or Division I sports. It's clearly as, Clint and Mark laid out, this is not just a Division I issue. This is across colleges and universities. It has a lot more to do with states and and who legalizes, gambling.

And so, you know, this is not just if you say, well, I'm at a Division III college. I don't have to worry about this. That's not the case.

Second, as you said, it is a student wellness issue that requires, I think, just as much attention as we put on alcohol.

And, you know, alcohol abuse and, you know, the concerns about alcohol have been front and center for college presidents, you know, for decades since, essentially, I think the drinking age, especially since the drinking age went up to 21. You know, there's been so much pressure and focus on that, and then there was focus on mental health, of course, in and around the pandemic.

I don't ever remember gambling, which is, of course, associated with those two other pieces we just talked about, ever rising to the level.

You know, I just was at the ACU meeting for a couple of days and didn't really see a lot on the agenda there. You know, when I get together with presidents, this issue almost never comes up.

So I hope in some ways, we might have done a public service with this episode that I'm hoping it gets on the agenda, by the way, not just the presidents, but the boards out there who are asking from an enterprise risk management standpoint, like, 'What are you all doing about this?'

And then, I just, again, as somebody who I must admit is not much of a gambler, I'm just shocked at, like, all the different ways this is now manifesting itself, and let's, you know, even the prediction markets now are huge on college campuses.

So this is not just I think people think, 'Oh gambling, like traditional gambling. You know, go play you know, placing bets with your bookie or now, obviously, online, the apps, everything else.'

But now it's fascinating to me reading some of these stories, including this one that was just in The Wall Street Journal, that the prediction markets are really taking off on college campuses, which, of course, is another form of gambling.

Michael Horn

Yeah. So stay on that one.

This is why I was so excited for this conversation, frankly, was, not just the prediction markets, but the prop betting markets that we talked about upfront, these prop bets that are basically micro bets within games.

Just to step outside of the college landscape for a second, in the average ATP tennis match at the moment, there are 1,500 betting opportunities per match. 1,500 per tennis match. Right?

And, like, some of these are, like, random, you know, backcourts at whatever and, like, is the person gonna miss their second serve on, you know, when it's third game of the second ... Like, obscure. Right?

And you think about the level of ability for an individual athlete to very innocuously sort of throw that one side or the other, and how little impact it has on the ultimate integrity or outcome of the match. Now, obviously, they were talking about all the technology and partnerships they are using to throw at it to try to make sure that if you see a big swing on something as we have seen on the prediction markets to you to your point, and and it was in that Wall Street Journal article, they can dive in.

But I just think, 'Wow. The rabbit hole on this is huge.' Because you imagine, I'm the student athlete. I don't bet on the game. I follow the rules. You know, people I know, second, third degree, I'm in a class with them. They have something on a prop bet. Maybe it's multiple of these over time. It's a small swing. I'm getting a cut underneath it. And if I break it at some point, then all of a sudden there's all this hatred on me. Forget about social media if they're my classmates. Like, it's coming ... The vitriol is coming to me in class. Now we've got a major culture issue on campus and safety issue on all sides of it, and there's a lot of unsavory characters.

I mean, I'm so like, just, again, tennis. Like, tennis players, women getting phone calls in their hotel rooms, like, from Russia, you know, mob bosses and whatever. Like, this in college, I think it's really scary, Jeff. I would love to know. Just I'll let you in a sec, but I would love to know, you know, they talked about how Charlie Baker, leading the NCAA, made this legal in Massachusetts. I would love to ask him, would he redo that decision?

Jeff Selingo

Well, I hope we could have him on because there's a lot of by way, there's lot of sports issues as we know. Then just gambling right now.

And, Michael, in some ways, when we first scheduled this episode, I thought this was gonna be another one of these episodes about college athletics that we have done. You know, we're both big college athletics fans. This to me is just so much broader. I mean, college athletics is a huge piece of it, and the college athletes among them are a huge piece of this. But this to me is a student affairs issue. This is an academic affairs issue. This is a financial affairs issue. Right? When you think about all the tentacles that this has around campus in terms of the inability of students to go to class, you know, depression and anxiety around these bets, the financial piece of this, right, losing money that could go to pay for college. Like, there's just every single piece, and as Mark and Clint said, then it leads to these other high-risk behaviors.

And so to me, this is a much bigger issue than I first imagined when we first scheduled this episode.

And, again, I really hope that everybody who had listened to this episode will share it with other people on their teams, with other people at colleges and universities. Because, again, I think that if you're not an athletics fan in some way and you haven't really been paying attention, especially on the pro side, to how gambling is now in every single part of sports, and I will say I think one of the biggest mistakes that all the pro leagues have done is kinda get in bed with the gambling companies. I think they're gonna really come to regret that.

Michael Horn

I agree. They're flirting with danger. Yeah.

Jeff Selingo

Yeah, I think it was really flirting with danger. And now I think, again, if you don't really pay attention to that, you probably … this has been kind of under your radar on college campuses, and, again, hope that people share this, going forward.

And with that, we will wrap up this episode of Future U.

Again, thanks to Mark and Clint and the NCAA for playing ball on this, this one, and we'll see you next time on Future U.

The Sports Betting Madness on College Campuses

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