Social media abuse targeting student-athletes, including from sports bettors, decreased during March Madness, but tournament officials and coaches experienced a spike in harassment, according to study results released Tuesday by the NCAA.
Athletes were targeted in 15% of the abuse flagged by data-science firm Signify Group during the men’s and women’s basketball tournaments this year, down from 42% last year. Sports betting-related abuse dropped by 23%, the study found.
The men’s tournament featured the fewest outright upsets by betting underdogs (14) since the field expanded to 64 teams in 1985.
Social media abuse directed at participants in the women’s tournament decreased 83%, but the men’s side saw a 140% increase in harassment, much of it directed at the selection committee and coaches.
“There was a lot in there that was directed at the NCAA committee from the outset of March Madness, with some of the bubble teams and who got in and who got out; couple coaches’ changes that happened throughout March Madness seemed to trigger a lot of abuse, as well,” Clint Hangebrauck, managing director of enterprise risk management for the NCAA, told ESPN. North Carolina athletic director Bubba Cunningham, who chaired the men’s selection committee, received online abuse and harassment after the Tar Heels became one of the last teams into the field. Local media reports said Cunningham received “angry, profane and threatening emails” from “hundreds” of fans of other schools.
“Obviously, we don’t want abuse to be directed at anybody,” Hangebrauck said, “but from a mental health and resources standpoint, some of those mature adult-aged individuals can hopefully deal with those situations a little bit better.”
Signify Group used artificial intelligence to monitor over a million comments directed at players, teams, coaches, officials and other stakeholders on X, Instagram and TikTok. In its second study for the NCAA, Signify Group flagged 3,161 posts as abusive or threatening and reported them to the relevant social media platforms. The company investigated 103 social media accounts behind the threatening content and referred 10 cases to law enforcement.
“By supporting the NCAA in demonstrating that abusers can be identified and will be reported to law enforcement — where criminal thresholds are broken — it is possible to see a deterrent effect in play,” Jonathan Hirschler, Signify Group’s CEO, said in a news release, adding that abuse-related sports betting is often behind the “most egregious and threatening content.”
NCAA president Charlie Baker has prioritized the issue of sports betting-related harassment directed at student-athletes and continues to push for states to ban prop bets on individual college players. The NCAA is also advocating for anti-harassment laws that could lead to bettors being banned from state-licensed sportsbooks. The decrease in sports betting-related abuse this year coincided with the NCAA’s “Don’t be a loser” anti-harassment campaign that ran during the men’s and women’s tournaments.
Additionally, the NCAA is turning to technology to shield athletes from abuse. Signify Group hid social media abuse sent to Mississippi State forward Chandler Prater, who was guarding Southern California star JuJu Watkins when Watkins suffered a season-ending knee injury in the NCAA tournament. Prater told ESPN she began receiving abuse on Instagram, including racial slurs, directly after the game and eventually shut off social media for approximately two weeks. Prater said she wants other athletes to understand that they’re not alone in receiving harassment.
“I know that [online abuse] impacts the athlete behind the screen and the athlete in the jersey,” Prater said. “At the end of the day, we are humans and people with feelings and emotions, just like everybody else. It just gets really crazy at times.”
