Sports betting is legal and growing more popular. Harassment of athletes by angry gamblers is rising too

Gabby Thomas being harassed at last weekend’s Grand Slam Track meet was shocking – except, actually, it wasn’t, given how often it seems to be happening. Thomas, a three-time Olympic gold medalist, said she was verbally abused at the meet, reporting on X that a “grown man followed me around the track as I took pictures and signed autographs for fans (mostly children) shouting personal insults.” Thomas’ statement was in reply to another post on X – which has since been deleted – showing a video of a person heckling Thomas while she was on the starting line, shouting, “You’re a choke artist; you’re going down, Gabby.” The social media user bragged about how his actions had benefitted his bet, writing: “I made Gabby lose by heckling her. And it made my parlay win,” alongside a screenshot of two multi-leg bets on the FanDuel sportsbook platform. FanDuel said it had banned the person responsible for the abuse from its platform, explaining it “condemns in the strongest terms abusive behavior directed towards athletes.” “Threatening or harassing athletes is unacceptable and has no place in sports. This customer is no longer able to wager with FanDuel,” the statement shared with CNN Sports added. It was in 2018 that the US Supreme Court struck down a 1992 federal law, which had prohibited most states from allowing sports betting. Gambling on sports is now legal in 39 states, which experts warn has opened the floodgates for a torrent of abuse towards professional and collegiate leagues from bettors who blame them for their financial losses. In March, the NCAA launched a campaign aimed at tackling what it described as “the alarming prevalence of abuse and harassment student-athletes face from angry fans who lost a bet.” According to an analysis of abusive messages sent via social media to college athletes, coaches and officials during the Division I championships, 12% – some 740 messages – were related to sports betting, according to the NCAA. Instances of such messages included one user who threatened a college athlete with the message, “Yo no big deal but if you don’t get 22 points and 12 boards everyone you know and love will Be dead,” according to the analysis, which was produced with Signify Group. Meanwhile, over 540 abusive betting-related messages – including death threats – were leveled at men’s and women’s basketball student-athletes and game officials during March Madness, a preliminary set of data trends found. Clint Hangebrauck, managing director of enterprise risk management at the NCAA told CNN: “I think athletes are under attack right now, frankly, on social media and in person, and a lot of the people slinging the biggest bullets are sports bettors.” Hangebrauck, who has worked at the NCAA for 15 years, said that there has been a surge of athletes receiving abuse since the federal ban on sports betting was struck down, adding that in certain states – including Ohio and North Carolina – a barrage of abuse towards student athletes was “almost immediate.” The NCAA is now seeking a ban on proposition bets, colloquially known as prop bets, on college athletes, calling the phenomenon “a mental health nightmare.” Prop bets are made on outcomes not associated with the final score and are often based on individual performances. “You could even perform well, and you’re receiving all this negative feedback from betters because you didn’t hit specific betting lines,” Hangebrauck added, noting that about half of the states that do allow gambling in the US have banned prop bets on student athletes. Jason Lopez, assistant professor in the Department of Communication Arts at the University of Wisconsin told CNN Sports: “The way that the newly legalized sports betting universe works is that it’s very common to make prop bets where, even though it’s a team sport, you can actually bet on the performance of individual players.” “It turns what could be a team game into an individual performance, too. And so it’s easy to then focus whatever anger you have on the bet at individual players,” Lopez, whose research focuses on sports media and betting, explained. Widespread issue The issue of bettors harassing athletes is widespread across sporting disciplines, with tennis and NBA players reporting instances of abuse. For a few professional athletes, it’s an opportunity to punch back. In reply to a social media user who gave him grief about his seeming nonchalance over a bad performance in a game, NBA superstar Kevin Durant posted on X in November 2024, “Stop blaming me for losing money because you have a gambling problem.” For others, however, social media comments made cross any acceptable line. In the past few weeks, MLB players Lance McCullers Jr. and Liam Hendriks have both reported that their families have been on the receiving end of death threats. Houston Astros pitcher McCullers Jr. revealed he received threats from a man who took to social media and threatened to find his kids and “murder them.” The Houston Police Department later traced these threats to an intoxicated sports bettor from overseas who had lost money betting on the Astros’ May 10 game against the Cincinnati Reds, per Reuters. Boston Red Sox pitcher Hendriks reported similar abuse, telling MLB.com that “with the rise of sports gambling, it’s gotten a lot worse.” “Threats against my life and my wife’s life are horrible and cruel,” Hendriks wrote in a post on his Instagram Stories, according to MLB.com. “You need help. Comments telling me to commit suicide and how you wish I died from cancer is disgusting and vile. Maybe you should take a step back and re-evaluate your life’s purpose before hiding behind a screen attacking players and their families. He added: “Whether it be Venmo requests, whether it be people telling you in their comments, ‘Hey, you blew my parlay. Go f*ck yourself,’ kind of stuff. And then it’s, ‘Go hang yourself. You should kill yourself. I wish you died from cancer.’ “That one kind of hit a little too close to home for me with everything I’ve gone through,” Hendriks, who in 2023 announced he had been diagnosed with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, added. Joe Maloney, senior vice president of strategic communications for the American Gaming Association, told CNN Sports in a statement: “The outcome of a bet is never an invitation to harass or threaten athletes, coaches, or officials. Abuse of any kind has no place in sports.” “The legal, regulated industry offers the transparency and accountability needed to identify bad actors and collaborate with leagues, regulators, and law enforcement to deter misconduct and enforce consequences. Unlike illegal and unregulated market apps or bookies, legal operators work every day to uphold the integrity of competition and ensure a responsible wagering environment,” Maloney added. Lopez pointed out that, while sports betting has only recently been legalized and commercialized across the United States, most sports have been associated with wagering since their beginnings, albeit in a more underground capacity up until recently. “There’s just a basic fact about (sports) companies and organizations that run these games for entertainment which is that gambling helps increase interest – it drives interest. So they like all the betting that’s happening around them; it builds interest in their sport. “Their athletes being abused, especially if they’re collegiate athletes, could harm their entertainment product. So they have to take very public stances about this in order to try to mitigate the idea that you know this entertainment product is putting people at risk,” he added. Hangebrauck added to CNN: “I think there’s a responsible way to engage in sports betting, and a lot of fans and people do so. Ninety-six percent of people overall generally lose in sports betting in the long run, so just be responsible about how you react to that – own it yourself.”