Fifty years after Indiana University ended a historic season with a victory in the 1976 NCAA championship, Americans are expected to wager billions this year on March Madness.
When US bettors finish their brackets and place their final wagers on the 2026 NCAA tournament, the American Gaming Association estimates that approximately $3.3 billion will be wagered on the event. One cohort which is prohibited from betting on the tournament is the referees who officiate the games themselves. Ahead of the tournament, the NCAA is employing sophisticated monitoring surveillance to detect whether officials are breaking the rules.
Last week, the NCAA announced that it is partnering with Integrity Compliance 360 to use the company’s ProhiBet solution to monitor tournament officials. More than 200 officials, including alternates, will be screened through the technology. Beyond basketball, the NCAA will partner with IC360 for monitoring officials during the Division I baseball and softball championships.
“Implementing ProhiBet is a major step in increasing integrity protections for college sports,” Mark Hicks, the NCAA’s managing director of enforcement, said in a news release. “This platform adds another layer to the NCAA’s robust integrity monitoring programme as we work to keep competition integrity and student-athlete well-being paramount in a rapidly evolving sports betting environment.”
Since the 2018 PASPA ruling, the NCAA has not publicly disclosed a single case involving a referee who has been caught wagering on sports. Former NBA referee Tim Donaghy went to prison in 2008 for betting on games that he officiated, while MLB fired umpire Pat Hoberg last year for sharing a betting account with an acquaintance.
How it works
Perhaps the most attractive aspect of ProhiBet is anonymity. Founded by Matt Heap, former chief of investigations with the Colorado Department of Gaming, ProhiBet contains an encrypted, cross-monitoring platform that aids regulators and sports governing bodies in a comprehensive investigative process.
When attempting to determine a match between a sportsbook operator’s database and one from a regulator, Prohibet uses a number of inputs such as: first name, last name, date of birth, telephone numbers, an individual’s address and social security number. After an NCAA official passes a background check, the individual’s personally identifiable information (PII) will be crosschecked for verification purposes.
The presence of common names can make an investigator’s job challenging. In the NCAA tournament, Iowa State’s Milan Momcilovic and Yaxel Lendenborg of Michigan have unique names. But Joshua Jefferson, a teammate of Momcilovic, has a name that is more common.
ProhiBet utilises a tool called “cryptographic hashing”, for additional privacy. Through hashing, you can convert a referee’s name, i.e. Roger Ayres, to a tag such as FY87@%!hgdk95h. If there’s a match between Ayres’ hashtag (FY87@%!hgdk95h) at a sportsbook database with the one used by a regulator, (FY87@%!hgdk95h) there may be a marker for improper betting.
“This collaboration sets a new industry benchmark and reinforces the importance of proactive deterrence and detection in keeping collegiate athletics fair,” said IC360 co-CEO Scott Sadin in a statement.
For Heap, meanwhile, the collaboration may represent the first steps into ProhiBet’s larger expansion across the US with other sports bodies.
“The closer you get to ubiquitous coverage across all leagues, the smaller the windows of opportunity are for people to sneak through,” he told iGB last December. “That’s the ultimate goal for ProhiBet.”
First guilty plea in point shaving case
Also last week, Jalen Smith pleaded guilty in a Pennsylvania court to federal match fixing charges. Smith, a presumed ringleader in the college basketball point shaving case, is the first defendant to offer a guilty plea in the case. Two other defendants, Shane Hennen and Marves Fairley, are also facing charges in a Brooklyn sports betting case that has ensnared several NBA figures.
Given his strict adherence to integrity, the late Bob Knight may find the scandal troubling. Under Knight in 1976, Indiana ended its season 32-0. The Hoosiers are the last team in Division I college basketball to go undefeated for an entire season.
Miami (Oh.) went 31-0 in the regular season to become only the eighth team in the last 50 years to go undefeated during a full regular season. The Redhawks were upset by UMass in the Mid-American Conference tournament. Miami (1%) is a longshot at Kalshi to win the NCAA tournament.
As of Wednesday afternoon, Duke is the favourite at Kalshi (20%) to capture the title. Three others, Michigan, Arizona and Florida, have a probability over 10% to cut down the nets at the Final Four.
Matt Rybaltowski
Matt is primarily responsible for long-form feature coverage on complex sports betting scandals. He also provides coverage on finance, M&A and other technological developments.
Original article: https://igamingbusiness.com/sustainable-gambling/prohibet-will-screen-ncaa-refs-for-betting-detection/
