Fanatics Sportsbook to Identify, Ban Abusive Sports Bettors

• Fanatics Sportsbook today announced a new bad actor program in partnership with IC360 and Signify Group
• The new monitoring program will identify potentially abusive and threatening social media behavior from Fanatics Sportsbook users
• Users found engaging in such behavior will be banned or restricted from Fanatics Sportsbook platform

Fanatics Sportsbook will debut an industry-first initiative starting in the upcoming football season to identify individuals who target athletes, coaches, and sports officials with online abuse or threats and potentially ban or restrict them from its sports betting platform.

Fanatics Sportsbook today announced a new program with Integrity Compliance 360 (IC360) and Signify Group, the ProhiBet Bad Actor Program, to monitor sports betting users for social media abuse. Fanatics Sportsbook is the first legal sports betting operator to use the new program.

“This groundbreaking program will hold bettors accountable for threats made against players, coaches, and officials. It falls in line with our core values at Fanatics – respect and tolerance for the athletes and coaches that play the games that we love,” Matt King, CEO of Fanatics Betting and Gaming, said in a press release. “We encourage other operators to join the initiative because there is no sports betting potential loss that should embolden a sports betting customer to threaten or harass an athlete online.”

Banning Abusive Sports Bettors

The new program will use Signify Group’s Threat Matrix monitoring technology, in collaboration with IC360’s Prohibet BA program, to identify sports betting users who abuse or issue threats to athletes, coaches, or officials on social media. The Threat Matrix technology will automatically monitor for targeted abusive and threatening content across multiple social media platforms.

Athletes, coaches, and teams can also submit perceived instances of direct message abuse to the new program for consideration.

The technology will automatically monitor public-facing activity across X, Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, and YouTube.

As the first legal sports betting operator to feature the new program, Fanatics Sportsbook will suspend or permanently terminate a customer’s account if they are determined to be engaging in abusive, threatening, defamatory, or harassing conduct toward sports officials, coaches, or athletes.

“Fanatics Sportsbook has a zero-tolerance policy for bettors who engage in threatening conduct toward sports figures,” the company noted in a release.

The program will also shared information and evidence with sports leagues and teams when athletes are targeted by abusive sports bettors.

State Programs Have Led to Few, if Any, Bans

Fanatics Sportsbook is the first legal sports betting operator to use the new technology to enforce its harassment policy.

Four states currently have laws on the books allowing state gaming commissions or regulatory boards the power to ban residents from engaging in online or in-person sports betting if found to be engaging in harassing behavior. However, there have been few, if any, actual bans of sports bettors from these laws.

Wyoming, Ohio, and West Virginia all currently have rules on the books allowing their regulatory bodies to ban residents from sports betting connected to harassment. Louisiana also passed a similar law in May which will not go into effect until Aug. 1.

The Louisiana bill allows the Louisiana Gaming Control Board to create rules which will allow the regulatory body to ban Louisiana sports betting residents from participating in online sports betting and in-person sports betting if found to be engaging in behavior or actions of harassment against any person involved in a sporting event

The Wyoming Gaming Commission approved changes to its regulations in December 2024 to better define harassment and voted to allow those found to be engaging in harassing behavior against athletes to be placed on an involuntary exclusion list to be banned from sports betting in the state.

The Wyoming Gaming Commission worked with the state’s attorney general’s office to amend the definition of harassment to the following:

“It means to engage in conduct including, but not limited to, verbal threats, written threats, electronic threats, lewd or obscene statements or images, vandalism, or non-consequential physical contact directed at a person that the defendant knew or would have know would have caused a reasonable person to suffer.”

Any sports bettor who is found to be harassing an athlete under this definition can now be placed on a state involuntary exclusion list to be banned from sports betting in the state.

West Virginia Gov. Jim Justice (R) signed a state bill into law in March 2024, but the legislation did not go into effect until June 2024. It allows the West Virginia Lottery Commission to  effectively ban individuals from participating in sports betting for the following reasons:

• A prior conviction of this code
• A prior violation of an order from the lottery commission
• If the commission determines that the person poses a threat to the safety of patrons or participants in a sporting event or determines that the person has engaged in a pattern of conduct of harassing a sports official, coach, or any participants.

Ohio legislators also included a provision in the Ohio 2024-2025 fiscal year budget to allow state regulators to permanently ban or place sports bettors on an exclusion list if they’re found to be harassing or threatening student-athletes over a sporting event. Under the law, this does not apply to professional athletes, former Ohio Casino Control Commission (OCCC) Executive Director Matthew Schuler told Sports Betting Dime.