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00:00Now, meanwhile, I read a column over at Legal Sports Report, a positive column, which is very rare these days, about athletes interacting with some sports bettors.
00:09Now, every story, Sam, that seems to be coming out lately is about how sports bettors are taking aim at athletes when they lose their bets.
00:17We've seen it in tennis. We've seen it in basketball. We saw it in baseball recently.
00:21But I wonder, you know, the placement, honestly, of this story, does it mean good things for the NCAA to report, essentially, that they're seeing less fans coming after athletes when they lose their bets?
00:33Because certainly this could open up the door for more opportunity to have betting props and things of that nature.
00:40I like to kind of see through some of these stories, Sam. Is there anything to see through here?
00:45Yeah, I think there's a lot to take in overall.
00:48Well, first off, to your point, I was very happy to be writing a positive story about abuse targeting athletes.
00:54You know, you hear more and more about it. I think social media has amplified it.
00:58Obviously, the fact that we're all able to bet, you know, not going to a sports book now, you can just do it from your couch in five seconds.
01:04And all these athletes are very much online. You see people like Kevin Durant getting in arguments every day with people.
01:10They're very accessible. A lot of people just like to get a reaction.
01:13And, you know, so it is positive to see that abuse targeting college athletes during March Madness was down overall as it relates to sports betting.
01:22It was down about 30 percent, 36 percent for men and 83 percent for women.
01:27So the more and more we hear about these circumstances happening, you know, Gabby Thomas, the Olympic sprinter, just had a big thing happen the other week where some guy was heckling her and claimed he won his parlay because of it.
01:40It becomes better to study what's you know, what are we just seeing as more news out here and what is actually what are the numbers tell us compared to last year?
01:48So, you know, the NCAA has done a lot of campaigns about, you know, being responsible about, you know, treating these athletes as humans.
01:57You know, I wish we didn't have to do this kind of thing, but they have spent a lot of time on this.
02:01And to your point, they have spent a lot of time with states and lawmakers asking for prohibitions on certain kind of bets that seem to spark more harassment.
02:10You know, if it's a player prop bet, that's much easier to target a player than it is an entire team.
02:16Typically, one thing that the study did reveal, which was actually interesting, is that while harassment against athletes was down, harassed harassment against coaches, officials and selection committee members was actually very much up compared to last year.
02:32So I don't know if people are just less angry or less outspoken or if they're just shifting it to other, you know, other groups of people that are maybe easier to get away with harassing.
02:43Maybe it's I don't know why perhaps that has been the case, but that definitely was the case in the study.
02:49The NCAA is partnered with a bunch of new groups to monitor this kind of thing.
02:53So, again, doesn't tell us everything, but it is good that it's being studied as opposed to just here's the next new cycle of, you know, X, Y and Z player got harassed and it was sports betting related.
03:05So encouraging nonetheless, but would love to keep finding out more about this kind of thing.