Recommended Practices in Sports Betting Compliance

 

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Executive Summary: With big time sports on college campuses, and states now free to legalize sports wagering, our universities will now be faced with risks associated with sports gambling.  After all, the sports betting scandals involving athletes in the United States during the past 25 years have all occurred at the college level. In fact, according to a 2016 NCAA survey of more than 22,000 college athletes found “nearly one-quarter of male athletes violated NCAA rules by gambling money on sports in the previous year.”   A sports betting scandal at a university would be catastrophic. Therefore, it is critically important that LEAD1 athletic departments are aware of the risks associated with sports wagering such as prop betting (e.g. a bet made regarding the occurrence or non-occurrence during a game), student-athletes betting, off shore betting, and local campus bookies.

In addition to developing strong policies with respect to internal messaging, education, and compliance, forming close relationships with applicable state gaming regulators (e.g. state lotteries and state lottery commissions) and gaming interests such as local gaming commissions, sports books, and casinos, all of which regulate wagering, would help mitigate the risks of legalized sports betting.