The Wyoming Gaming Commission (WGC) unanimously agreed to amend its rules on athlete harassment from sports bettors.
Going forward, any person found to be harassing athletes will be placed on the state’s involuntary exclusion list. Offenders who are placed on the exclusion list will no longer be able to place prop bets (or bets of any kind), giving them no reason to harass the athletes. The change is supported by the NCAA, the University of Wyoming, and the state’s sports wagering operators.
The decision, made Friday, comes after nationwide concerns about the increase in harassment against professional athletes, particularly those competing in collegiate sports, from bettors who have lost money on unsuccessful prop bets.
Wyoming is the third U.S. state to explicitly punish harassers, joining Ohio and West Virginia which already have similar penalties in place.
NCAA seeks college props ban
Earlier this year, NCAA president Charlie Baker called for a ban on player prop bets in all states where college betting is legal. Thirteen U.S. states have such bans in place. Maryland, Vermont, and Ohio instituted college player prop bans after Baker began his campaign, making them the most recent additions to the list.
However, the Sports Betting Alliance (SBA) fears a straightforward ban on college props in Wyoming would not result in any meaningful change. Instead, it may drive bettors to offshore sportsbooks, resulting in increased risk for the player and a loss in revenue for the state. Pushing bettors to black market sportsbooks may also make it harder to prevent match fixing, says betting watchdog Integrity Compliance 360.
“With the prop ban, you remove a tool from the legal market that could be used to root out other issues like harassment. A ban does not affect the illegal market,” SBA lobbyist Scott Ward said at a recent meeting held by the WGC.
Ahead of the meeting, WGC operations manager Michael Steinberg composed a paper that outlined two different solutions: the “Ohio Solution” (an outright ban on college props) and the “Iowa Solution” (a ban on in-state college player props only).
“We all agree that harassment of student athletes is bad and something that should not be tolerated. The question then becomes, is banning prop bets going to eliminate the harassment of athletes?” read the paper.
New penalty to address the root of the issue
Wyoming sports betting has no restrictions on college gambling. Rather than alter the state’s position on player props, WGC commissioners believe the new penalty will deal effectively with the root of the issue.
The rule change also amends the definition of “harass” to engaging in “conduct, including but not limited to verbal threats, written threats, electronic threats, lewd or obscene statements or images, vandalism or nonconsensual physical contact, directed at a person the [offender] knew or should have known would cause a reasonable person to suffer: substantial emotional distress; substantial fear for their safety or the safety of another person; or substantial fear for the destruction of their property.”
