Protecting college athletes starts with transparency

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March Madness is one of the busiest betting periods of the year. Millions of fans engage with the tournament through brackets and online betting. (Getty Images)


As the college basketball world once again turns its attention to Indianapolis for the NCAA Men’s Final Four, Indiana regulators are weighing a proposal that could unintentionally weaken one of the most effective safeguards protecting athletes and the integrity of college and professional sports.

The proposal would prohibit legal sportsbooks from offering certain proposition bets involving college athletes. Protecting student athletes is a goal everyone shares. But eliminating regulated betting options risks pushing wagering activity back into the shadows of the illegal market, where suspicious behavior is far harder to detect, and athletes may be more vulnerable to harassment and manipulation.

March Madness is one of the busiest betting periods of the year. Millions of fans engage with the tournament through brackets and online betting. The last time Indianapolis hosted a Final Four with fans in attendance in 2015, legal sports betting didn’t exist in Indiana. Today, fans can place wagers in a safe and regulated marketplace designed to protect consumers, athletes, and the integrity of the games.

Too often, all sports betting gets treated the same. But there is a critical difference between licensed sportsbooks operating under state oversight and illegal offshore betting markets.

Indiana recognized that difference when it legalized sports betting in 2019. The goal was simple: bring betting activity into a transparent system where it could be monitored, consumers would be protected, and bad actors would be held accountable.

That system is working​

Legal sportsbooks now serve as one of the earliest warning systems when something in the betting market doesn’t look right. Suspicious betting patterns identified by regulated operators have triggered investigations into potential match-fixing and insider betting.

In one recent case, a suspiciously large bet on a college baseball game helped expose a coach who had been sharing insider information with a bettor. In another, irregular betting tied to player prop markets helped uncover misconduct involving college basketball athletes. And in the professional ranks, operators flagged suspicious betting on an NBA player prop that ultimately drew federal scrutiny.

These investigations were possible because the activity occurred in regulated markets.

Licensed sportsbooks share betting data with regulators, sports leagues, and independent integrity monitoring firms. Advanced monitoring systems, alongside large risk monitoring teams, track betting activity in real time, identifying unusual line movement, sudden spikes in wagers, and irregular betting on obscure outcomes.

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When suspicious activity appears, alerts are sent to regulators, leagues, and integrity monitoring associations, allowing other regulated operators to investigate their own wagering activity.

But this system only works if betting remains inside the regulated market.

When legal options disappear, betting does not. It moves. And it often moves to offshore sportsbooks operating outside U.S. jurisdiction. These sites offer no meaningful consumer protections and have no obligation to report suspicious activity to regulators, leagues, or law enforcement.

Transparency​

In other words, the transparency that helps detect integrity threats disappears.Indiana’s regulated sportsbooks operate under strict oversight from the Indiana Gaming Commission. Operators must maintain sophisticated monitoring systems and report suspicious activity to regulators and integrity partners. Independent monitoring firms work alongside sportsbooks and leagues to analyze betting markets and flag anomalies as they happen.

Collaboration among regulators, sportsbooks, law enforcement, and leagues has become one of the most powerful tools for protecting athletes and games.

None of this means that concerns about student-athletes should be ignored. Harassment of collegiate athletes is unacceptable, whether related to wagering or not. The regulated gaming industry supports policies that protect players, and many operators, such as FanDuel, will ban users caught harassing athletes.

But protecting athletes should not come at the cost of eliminating transparency. Indeed, eliminating transparency is the greatest risk to our athletes.

Hoosiers expect the sports they love to be played fairly and honestly. Maintaining robust, regulated sports betting markets ensures that suspicious activity can be detected earlier and investigated more quickly.

As Indianapolis gets ready to host another Final Four under the national spotlight, policymakers should remember that integrity is strengthened by oversight and transparency, not by pushing activity back into the black market.

When it comes to protecting college athletes, the most dangerous place for betting activity isn’t the regulated marketplace.

It’s the shadows.

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