With legalized sports betting spreading state by state, a lot more people are investing their attention and their hard-earned money into gambling on sports. As a result, pretty much just as many people are losing money—and taking their frustrations on the athletes they wagered on.
A recent study by the NCAA and data science company Signify Group determined that “angry sports bettors” are taking out their losses on college athletes at an alarming rate. They defined angry sports bettors as people who “engage in problematic and intrusive communications due to match events and results contradicting bettors’ predictions.”
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To measure the abuse, researchers tracked over 3,000 college athletes, 500 coaches, 200 event officials, and 165 team accounts during tournaments and championships. They found at least 747 posts that they deemed abusive or threatening directed at college athletes. Among the messages, 1 in 4 were from accounts complaining about their betting L’s.
Digging deeper into the numbers, more than half of those verbal abuses (59%) targeted at women athletes. The study covered sports ranging from football to softball, leaving no stone unturned. With so many college sports around the country and so many games daily, bettors increasingly flock to smaller sports rather than waiting for a once-a-week NFL game.
It’s worth reiterating that only public messages were tracked. We all know that there is an alarming amount of hate directed at people in their DMs—so the total number of abusive messages actually sent is certainly higher.
As of October 2024, 38 states offer legalized sports betting. Of them, 18 states only allow college bets on the lines or the winner. That means there are no prop bets, where bettors place money on specific stats for a player, such as “John Smith from the University of Texas will score more than 20 points.”
The Signify Group will release a more detailed review later this week.
Sadly, none of this is a surprise. Sports betting has become so prevalent—it’s literally advertised everywhere—and with more and more money being plummeted into these sportsbooks, it’s no wonder that “angry sports bettors” are venting in terrible ways to the ones they claim are losing their money.
In reality, the athletes aren’t losing their money… it’s them.
