CHARLOTTE – As a massive storm moved towards Blacksburg last September, the incoming deluge also moved some sports wagering numbers.
Bettors, seeing the impending downpour, began heavily laying money on the under number for total points of the Purdue-Virginia Tech game, figuring moving the ball would be difficult in those conditions.
That dramatic movement was a red flag for the company that helps ACC schools, like Virginia Tech, monitor the sports gambling landscape. Of course, in that instance, Integrity Compliance 360 quickly determined the reason behind the sudden change in betting patterns.
“That was due to the weather,” Virginia Tech director of compliance Derek Gwinn said. “But if something like that happens and there isn’t a logical explanation, they launch an investigation.”
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In 2018, the Supreme Court overturned the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act (PASPA), deeming the law that banned sports betting outside of Nevada unconstitutional.
The ruling opened the way – on a state-by-state basis – for legalized sports betting across the country. Virginia began allowing it in January, 2021.
Tech has partnered with Integrity Compliance 360 since 2019, when the company was called U.S. Integrity.
This year, the ACC will begin a partnership that gives the conference office and all 18 of its member schools access to 360’s dashboard, a compilation of betting data used to monitor irregularities, and the option to access educational programming and a prohibited bettors’ list.
The company flags unusual patterns in wagers being placed on ACC sports, everything from the big three of football and men’s and women’s basketball, to soccer, tennis and volleyball, all popular with bettors, particularly in international markets.
For ACC commissioner Jim Phillips, it’s part of the hyper-vigilance needed in this era of legalized sports betting.
“The proliferation of legalized gambling, that’s just where our country has gone,” Phillips said. “You can’t resist for your own personal views. It really has to be, this is an area that can cause real harm when you’re talking about integrity of competition. Let’s make sure we’re giving our student athletes and our teams the best resources we can from a conference perspective.”
Major betting swings that could indicate match fixing are easy to spot and explain, like the Purdue-Virginia Tech game. More challenging, said ACC deputy commissioner Brad Hostetter, is policing prop bets, where bettors can wager on things like how many points an individual player might score in a game.
Did a player pass up a shot to keep his or her point total down, or because he or she thought that was the right play? Did a football player drop a pass intentionally or was it simply an athletic failing.
Hostetter said the ACC and its presidents would like to see the federal government regulate sports wagering in the college space, but that issue got moved to the back burner as concerns over name, image and likeness took over the Congressional-influence discussion.
“I had a feeling that this was going to be a challenge for our schools and for our student athletes,” Hostetter said. “I thought it was going to be messy. Our membership thought it was going to be messy.”
The NCAA, which, since 2019, has worked with a company called Sportradar to monitor the sports gambling landscape, still bans betting by athletes and staff on any sport that is sponsored by the organization. In other words, betting on professional basketball is against the rules because the NCAA sponsors basketball at the college level.
It’s a policy schools work hard to educate their athletes about, and that has been a challenge.
“There’s a lot of things, for these student athletes that’s legal, but then they can’t do it,” Virginia coach Tony Elliott said. “It’s hard when everyone around them is able to do these things and then you’ve got to tell them that they can’t.”
In 2022, Virginia Tech linebacker Alan Tisdale had been betting on professional basketball. Realizing he could be in violation of the NCAA rules, he and Tech self-reported his case. Instead of leniency, Tisdale was suspended for a full season.
He and Tech appealed and eventually got his punishment reduced, first to nine games and later to six.
Later that same year, the NCAA changed its punishment guidelines. An offense of Tisdale’s nature would now receive a warning.
Further change could be on the way. The NCAA council, which next meets in October, is considering dropping the pro sports ban, altogether.
Gwinn believes that’s a change the NCAA should make, but he does not want to see betting allowed on college sports, where athletes and staff have access to inside information and could be the targets of tampering.
One thing he would not want changed is Virginia’s law that uses geolocation to ban betting on in-state schools. A person in Virginia cannot place a wager on Virginia Tech, UVa or any of the Commonwealth’s other institutions.
Gwinn said this helps head off one of the major concerns regarding sports gambling – that athletes could face harassment from bettors seeking to impact their performance or simply lashing out because of the results.
“That really reduces the threat,” Gwinn said. “Our concerns would be a little less than they’d be at a Tennessee or a WVU, where people in the college town are placing bets on the team or even on a particular player’s performance. That can’t happen here.”
Not all states with ACC schools have the same law and the issue of athlete harassment is the primary worry for Hostetter.
“They’re going to class every day. They’re in dorms every day. In meal halls every day. With people who are betting on them,” Hostetter said. “Then you add in the growth of social media since sports wagering became legalized in all these states and the ease with which you can criticize somebody or harass somebody in a faceless way on social media.”
That’s another area 360 helps with. The company monitors social media for aggressive and concerning posts and can work with local law enforcement agencies to investigate situations that arise.
In all, Phillips is pleased with the position the ACC is in when it comes to monitoring the sports gambling landscape, but he said it’s vital not to lose focus.
“Sometimes, it’s not a matter of if, but when, in situations like this when you have so many student athletes, so many sports going on, the outside influences,” Phillips said. “But I’m proud of how we’ve handled it.”
