NCAA will use tech to eye tourney refs for betting

If a referee working next week's men's or women's basketball tournaments opens a sportsbook account or tries to place a bet, the NCAA wants to know about it.

The NCAA announced Tuesday that it will begin monitoring its officials in this year's basketball, baseball and softball championships with ProhiBet, a technology by Integrity Compliance 360 (IC360) that crosschecks anonymized identification data with sportsbooks to flag impermissible bettors. IC360 works with sports leagues and sportsbooks to track the betting market.

"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 program as we work to keep competition integrity and student-athlete well-being paramount in a rapidly evolving sports betting environment."

NCAA championship officials are bound by similar rules that prohibit student-athletes, coaches and schools from betting on sports. More than 220 officials, including alternate referees, will work the men's and women's basketball tournaments. In addition to the background checks that officials must pass to be eligible for the postseason, their names will be uploaded to the ProhiBet system, anonymized and then crosschecked with customer data at participating sportsbooks.

If any suspected violations are discovered, the NCAA said it would consider whether the activity could merit removal of the referee's championship officiating duties.

More than two dozen U.S. sportsbooks use ProhiBet, and many NCAA schools and conferences have implemented the technology as well. However, this is the first year that the technology will be used to monitor officials at championship events.

"This collaboration sets a new industry benchmark and reinforces the importance of proactive deterrence and detection in keeping collegiate athletics fair," IC360 co-CEO Scott Sadin said.