Venmo, NCAA announce partnership to help curb harassment of student-athletes
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As sports betting becomes omnipresent in modern society, college athletes are finding themselves in the crosshairs of villainous actors. And the NCAA is tired of it.
On Tuesday, the NCAA and Venmo announced a partnership to “curb harassment of student-athletes.” A recent NCAA study — noted in Venmo’s press release — found that “12% of abusive content aimed at college athletes is linked to sports betting, with nearly one in five (19%) harassment cases in men’s football involving betting-related abuse.” Together, the organizations are hoping to “protect student-athletes from these unwanted interactions.”
“While unwanted interactions to athletes make up an extremely small percentage of transactions on Venmo, even a small number of these incidents is unacceptable,” David Szuchman, the ‘SVP, Head of Global Financial Crime and Customer Protection, PayPal’ said. “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.”
The “decisive steps” include a dedicated hotline for athletes and the NCAA to report potential abuse, a “best practices” guide for athletes and active account monitoring. Venmo will also increase “user education” on the “possible outcomes” of athlete harassment, such as account closure.
“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,” NCAA President Charlie Baker said in Venmo’s press release. “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.”
Over-the-line bashing of any athlete for poor performance is worthy of condemnation. Now, the NCAA is doing all it can to ensure its athletes’ safety. In an age where it feels like the organization always falls short, this is an unequivocal win on its ledger.
