The Wyoming Gaming Commission has decided to put an end to bettors harassing college athletes for underperforming and will craft new rules that will punish those who do.
Banning Bad Behavior
The harmful effects on the mental health of student-athletes from online harassers have come into question recently, and the Wyoming Gaming Commission has chosen to be proactive in protecting those college athletes.
The problem stems from disgruntled gamblers directing their frustration towards athletes for what they perceive as their poor performances, causing them to lose money at the betting windows. It is not a problem peculiar to Wyoming, as the topic has been broached across the nation and has even caused the NCAA to advocate for banning college player proposition bets entirely.
WGC’s Proactive Approach
However, at a recent meeting of the Wyoming Gaming Commission, the commissioners decided to take an approach similar to Ohio and West Virginia in which those responsible for targeting and threatening student-athletes through social media would be punished rather than banning college player props from the sports betting menus of its operators.
“Harass encompasses behaviors such as verbal, written, or electronic threats, lewd or obscene messages or images, acts of vandalism, or physical contact without consent. These actions must be targeted at an individual with the awareness—or reasonable assumption—that they would result in considerable emotional distress, fear for personal safety, or anxiety about potential property damage.”
The Commission’s rules would place any bettor found harassing a college athlete on an involuntary exclusion list and would bar that person from betting with any licensed Wyoming sportsbook.
Not Everyone’s a Fan
While the WGC has forged a practical solution in theory, some believe a college player prop ban may ultimately be added to the new rules. If so, those sports betting industry stakeholders fear it will drive those bettors to the unregulated market.
Sports Betting Alliance’s Concerns
One such interested party is the Sports Betting Alliance, whose members include industry heavyweights, FanDuel, DraftKings, Fanatics, and BetMGM. The group has spoken out against banning nearly all betting offerings, stating it could drive bettors to the unregulated market and away from US-licensed sportsbooks.
Scott Sadin, chief operating officer of Integrity Compliance 360 (IC360), commented recently at a conference, “By banning those props, you’re pushing more activity and engagement to offshore, underground markets where that lacks visibility, that lacks collaboration, that lacks access to data.”
“Our system benefits from engagement from sportsbook operators giving us access to wagers, giving us access to odds,” Sadin said. “It benefits from working collaboratively with sports properties, talking about information and injuries and things of that nature. By banning them altogether, we’re going to lack the data access; we’re going to lack the transparency necessary in order to make sure we’re detecting [incidents] in as close to real-time as possible.”
Reasonable Compromise
However, if the WGC maintains the status quo and implements only the ban on bad actors, many believe the measure is a reasonable solution, considering it would maintain college player props on Wyoming’s sports betting menus and allow those who don’t harass collegiate athletes the same opportunity to wager on their individual performances as in other states.
