The NCAA says 67% of on-campus students are betting on sports, part of a new nationwide survey that the governing body will use to better shape its own rules regarding the fast-growing industry.
In addition, 63% of the college-age students say they see advertising for sportsbooks, a higher rate than the general population. The numbers are part of a new poll, conducted by Opinion Diagnostics and released Wednesday by the NCAA.
The survey was commissioned a few weeks ago by new NCAA president Charlie Baker amid growing scrutiny across college sports. While all the major U.S. pro leagues have rushed to embrace the legal sports betting market—and the multibillion-dollar revenue opportunity—the NCAA and its members have tried to keep the industry at arm’s length. The NCAA has no sports betting partners, and the few schools that did deals terminated them in the past year in the face of public pressure.
In just the last few weeks, betting controversies have popped up at a number of universities. Alabama fired baseball coach Brad Bohannon after an investigation into suspicious betting on a Crimson Tide game revealed that the person who placed the bets was communicating with Bohannon. Dozens of athletes at both Iowa and Iowa State are under investigation for sports betting violations, though it’s unclear if it involved their own teams.
“We needed a new baseline so we can better understand what student-athletes are experiencing on their campuses and among their peers so we can best help them deal with the potentially disruptive dynamic of legal sports betting,” Baker said in a statement.
The survey polled 3,527 people in the U.S. aged 18-22, and found that 58% of respondents have placed a bet of some sort on sports. While this survey did not specifically target college athletes, an NCAA study from 2016 found that 24% of male athletes and 5% of female athletes were wagering on sports, a violation of NCAA rules. This was before the Supreme Court struck down the national ban, and 33 states now have legal sports betting of some sort. The NCAA says it will conduct a newer version of that athlete-only survey later this year.
The NCAA’s rules say active athletes are not allowed to wager on sports of any kind, including standard bets, paid fantasy games or a Super Bowl box pool with an entry fee. The organization’s bigger fear, however, is match-fixing, where athletes intentionally manipulate games for their own financial gain. Opinions vary on whether the proliferation of legal sports betting makes that more or less likely.
The survey found that 41% of on-campus students who bet have placed wagers on their own college team. Nearly 35% of on-campus students who bet have placed wagers with a fellow student bookie.
While the NCAA has no commercial relationships with sportsbooks or for data to be used by operators, conferences have begun looking at the latter. Some sports data companies are also sending scouts to college football and basketball games, building data feeds off what those scouts relay in real time.
