Venmo, NCAA Team Up To Curtail Student-Athlete Harassment

• The NCAA and Venmo have teamed up to create several tools to help curtail student-athlete harassment linked to sports betting
• Venmo has created a dedicated hotline for student-athletes and the NCAA to report potential cases of abuse
• Venmo will also monitor student-athletes’ accounts to help mitigate requests based on game performances

Venmo and the NCAA announced a new partnership to help stem the wave of student-athlete harassment linked to sports betting.

According to a company announcement, Venmo will be collaborating with the NCAA to help protect student-athletes from unwanted interactions through a series of new tools and account monitoring techniques.

“While unwanted interactions to athletes make up an extremely small percentage of transactions on Venmo, even a small number of these incidents is unacceptable. The safety and security of our users remain our highest priority. Harassment or abuse of any kind is not tolerated on the platform, and strict action is taken against users who violate our policies. Through these measures, we are taking decisive steps to help prevent the misuse of our platform and ensure all our users feel protected when they use Venmo,” David Szuchman, SVP, Head of Global Financial Crime and Customer Protection for PayPal said.

Dedicated Harassment Hotline Coming

Despite incidents of student-athlete harassment declining in the most recent NCAA March Madness tournament, a study has shown that nearly 12% of abusive content aimed at college athletes is linked to sports betting, with nearly one in five harassment cases in men’s football involving sports betting related abuse.

Venmo announced it will be strengthening its protections for student-athlete users to maintain a positive experience. Venmo will begin offering a a dedicated hotline for student-athletes and the NCAA to report potential cases of abuse for investigation.

Venmo will also provide a best practices guide for student-athletes to stay safe on its platform with details on the reporting hotline.

“The harassment we are seeing across various online platforms is unacceptable, and we need fans to do better. We applaud Venmo for taking action, and we need more social media companies and online platforms to do the same. Several states have passed laws to crack down on this behavior to protect student-athletes, and we hope more do the same because stopping this abuse requires action on multiple fronts,” NCAA President Charlie Baker said.

Student-Athlete Account Monitoring

Additionally, Venmo announced it will monitor student-athletes’ account on an ongoing basis to help mitigate the influx of requests based on game performance. Venmo users have taken to requesting money from student-athletes after losing bets, which can lead to additional cases of student-athlete harassment.

By monitoring the accounts, Venmo said it will work directly with the student-athletes to implement additional security measures as needed.