NCAA Aligns With Venmo To Derail Online Harassment Of Student-Athletes
Tuesday, August 26, 2025 at 03:46PM By Barry Janoff
August 26, 2025: Stating that “harassment or abuse of any kind is not tolerated,” the NCAA has signed an alliance with Venmo mobile payment service to support student-athletes who face abuse on the payment app,
The move is part of a broader strategy by the NCAA to curtail online harassment of student-athletes.
“The harassment we are seeing across various online platforms is unacceptable, and we need fans to do better,” NCAA president Charlie Baker said via the organization.
“We applaud Venmo for taking action, and we need more social media companies and online platforms to do the same. 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.”
Venmo, founded in 2009 and owned by PayPal since 2013, has been ramping up its alliances with college sports, including in June an agreement with the Big 12 and Big Ten that allows schools to make NIL payments to their players directly through its platform.
According to Venmo, “Every member of the Venmo community deserves a safe and respectful experience when they use the app, so we’re strengthening the protections we have in place to make it easier for these users to maintain a positive experience.”
These protections include a dedicated hotline for student-athletes and the NCAA to report potential cases of abuse for investigation and identify typologies of athlete harassment on Venmo; and monitoring student-athletes' accounts on an ongoing basis to help mitigate an influx of requests based on game performance and work directly with them to implement additional security measures as needed.
In addition, Venmo said it would "educate users on the possible outcomes of harassing athletes through unwanted requests to athletes, including potential account closure and provide a best practices guide for student-athletes to stay safe on Venmo with details on the reporting hotline."
“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, PayPal svp-head of global financial crime and customer protection, said via the company.
“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.”
A recent study from the NCAA found that 12% of abusive content aimed at college athletes is linked to sports betting, with 19% harassment cases in men’s football involving betting-related abuse.
In some cases, sports fans and bettors will send unwanted payment requests to athletes after losing a bet placed on game performance.
In December 2023, the NCAA began working with Signify Group — using its Threat Matrix service powered by artificial intelligence — to investigate online harassment in college sports.
Following a multi-media PSA campaign and investigations, Signify found that 42% of social media abuse during March Madness in 2024 directly targeted student-athletes, while in 2025 this number decreased to 15%.
NCAA Efforts Lead To Decline In Betting-Related Harassment Of Student-Athletes
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