Indiana gaming officials turn down NCAA’s request to ban prop bets

Indiana gaming officials unanimously voted against banning bets on the actions of individual college athletes after considering the issue over the past few months.

Members of the Indiana Gaming Commission, who voted on the matter Thursday, found that though there were convincing arguments that the wagers — known as prop bets (short for proposition bets) — are harmful, banning them is a job for lawmakers at the Indiana General Assembly.

The Indianapolis-based NCAA brought the request to ban prop bets to the Indiana Gaming Commission in June with the support of Purdue University, Butler University and Indiana University. It is making similar requests in other states where sports betting is legal. Multiple states with legal sports gambling, including neighboring Ohio, have already banned prop bets on college sports, according to the NCAA

It is already illegal in Indiana to place prop bets while a contest is underway due to a 2019 decision by the commission, but the state allows the bets before a game begins.

NCAA officials pointed to that ban as evidence that the state regulators could and should take similar action for pregame prop bets.

The organization argues that all prop bets pose an integrity risk to college athletics.

NCAA Managing Director of Enforcement Mark Hicks highlighted multiple instances across the country, and at least one in Indiana, in which athletes have taken out bets on themselves and their teammates.

“From an integrity perspective, it’s easy to manipulate and hard to monitor,” he said.

NCAA Managing Director of Enterprise Risk Management Clint Hangebrauck  also noted violent, racist and anti-gay threats that college athletes have received related to their performances.

“It seems like attaching the name of an 18 year old — it could be a 17-year-old sometimes — to a betting market to walk them into this type of abuse doesn’t support the integrity of those markets,” he said.

Joe Maloney, president of the the Sports Betting Alliance, which represents large gambling platforms including DraftKings and FanDuel acknowledged that player harassment is a real issue, but argued there was not enough evidence to link prop bets to that harassment.

“The NCAA’s own data shows that less than 1% of integrity alerts over the last five years involved college props and shows athletes across a panoply of threats that includes racist and sexist threats are more likely to be harassed for reasons that have nothing to do with legal betting at all,” he said.

Maloney said banning all prop bets on college sports would lead bettors to visit illegal gambling services.

“The regulated market is a tool that lets operators, lets this commission trace a threat back to an account and take action on it,” he said. “We take that away, we lose visibility, not necessarily the risk.”

Joe Hoage, the Indiana Gaming Commission executive director, said the agency has not received referrals related to prop bet integrity threats since at least January 2025 when he started his role.

“We are open to investigating these issues, but you’ve got to bring them to us,” he said.

Hicks from the NCAA pushed back. He said the commission should be proactive about prop bets.

“If it can happen in Ohio, it certainly can happen here,” he said.

Gaming commissioners said there was not enough evidence to demonstrate that prop bets on college sports pose a threat to the sports betting market in Indiana.

Commissioner B.R. Lane said the issue appeared so broad that it requires attention from the Indiana General Assembly.

“We have a larger issue. It’s absolutely unacceptable for student athletes to be harassed. Full stop,” she said. “I don’t agree that there is no causal link between trying to coerce a student before a game and integrity [of that wager], but I think we all agree that we have a bigger issue here.”

But, she added. “I see so much criminal activity that we’re kind of glancing over … we have a great Legislature in Indiana and I know they would want to protect student athletes and I don’t understand, NCAA, if the situation is as serious as you’ve made clear to us today, why you’ve not addressed it in that way. You would have all of our support I think.”