March Madness officially tipped off Tuesday night with a last-second win by Alabama State to start the annual craziness off.
However, the real insanity over the next month could be from some of the fans that wager on America's biggest betting sporting event of the year.
The NCAA announced Tuesday that they have launched a new video to air throughout both the men's and women's college basketball tournament broadcasts as part of the Draw the Line campaign. The feature is also available online.
The new spot, titled "Don't Be a Loser," highlights the abuse and harassment that student-athletes continuously face from some angry and disgruntled fans who lost a bet.
The Draw the Line campaign is part of an initiative by the NCAA to respond to the rise of sports betting, as an estimated $3.1 billion will be legally bet on this year's basketball tournaments, doubling the amount bet on the Super Bowl, according to a recent report from the American Gaming Association (AGA).
Last year's study found that one in three student-athletes received abusive messages from those with a betting interest; a whopping 80% of the abuse was directed at men's and women's student-athletes during March Madness, with women's basketball players receiving approximately three times more threats than men.
"The horrific messages we are seeing across online platforms is absolutely unacceptable," NCAA President Charlie Baker said in a news release.
"Angry fans are sending numerous abusive messages and threats to student-athletes, publicly and privately, because of lost bets placed on the athlete's performance in a game. These actions severely threaten student-athlete mental health and well-being, while harming the college athletics environment. We need fans to do better. We need states to do better and ban player props that target student-athletes and enable detrimental abuse."
The NCAA's continuing efforts to fight and stop this madness are numerous and wide-ranging:
- Over 100,000 student-athletes have received sports betting and gambling harm prevention education through in-person training with EPIC Global Solutions and online learning.
- Over 22,000 contests are monitored through the world's largest global integrity monitoring campaign.
- Eighteen states and the nation's capital - Washington, D.C. - have banned player prop bets in response to NCAA advocacy efforts.
- Thousands of student-athletes, coaches and committee members are covered by Signify's harassment monitoring service.
- Multiple surveys have been conducted to understand and analyze wagering activity in 18 to 22-year-olds, betting challenges campus compliance directors face and betting behaviors and attitudes among student-athletes.
NCAA Tournament continues
The NCAA men's college basketball tournament continues Wednesday, March 19 with the final two games of The First Four at UD Arena in Dayton, Ohio.
You can enter the Madness with our March Madness picks.
The tournament starts in earnest with the full 64-team field on Thursday, March 20.
