NCAA Concerned About Betting Markets & Is Robinhood Now Taking Bets?

The NCAA, the governing body of college sports in the U.S., says it is concerned about “online prediction markets,” aka sports betting. The NCAA is well-known for its legal-ese, but it may not be as well known for its partnership with Genius Sports. More on that in a moment. 

In the world of sports betting and college athletics, we’re really only talking about two sports – football and basketball. For the NCAA, the big issue is prop bets in both sports. Prop bets are those that are related to a player-specific outcome – Arch Manning Over 236.5 Passing Yards, for example.

The NCAA is worried about the integrity of their sports as well as the health and well-being of its student-athletes. That’s interesting since the organization brought in an estimated $1.4 billion in revenue in 2024. A huge portion of that revenue comes from the NCAA’s contract with CBS and Turner Broadcasting for the rights to the NCAA basketball tournament. 

It’s also interesting to note that the NCAA entered into a partnership with the aforementioned Genius Sports. The company collects and then distributes (for a fee, of course) all sorts of sports data. This information, these statistics, are provided to sportsbooks and include real-time stats, analytics, and much more. 

The information provided by Genius Sports is then used by sportsbooks to set betting lines and odds on the same exact types of bets that concern the NCAA. With the rise of sports betting in the U.S. over the past decade, the NCAA is only doing what everyone else is doing – trying to cash in on the latest trend.

Robinhood, a financial services company, is now getting into the game. The company, while not offering traditional sports bets, offers “event contracts” which are really just betting on whether or not something will happen. Robinhood has expanded their event contracts to include point spread and totals in college and professional football. The company has also started to offer “event contracts” on player-specific events, i.e. prop bets.

There are still a number of U.S. states that do not allow sports bettors to wager on college player props. A number of states, including Ohio and Pennsylvania, have banned all forms of college prop betting. They are among 15 states that were asked by the NCAA to not offer any form of college prop betting. 

The remaining states allow some form of college prop betting. Some states have some restrictions on the types of bets allowed, but bettors can find some form of college prop betting. In Wisconsin, for example, bettors cannot wager on teams from Wisconsin. They can only bet on teams from outside of Wisconsin and they must place their bets at a tribal casino.

Robinhood, of course, says that their “event contracts” do not threaten the integrity of college sports. The company also believes their products do not harm student-athlete safety in any way. It will be interesting to see how this all plays out. At the moment, both FanDuel and DraftKings are looking to enter this “event contract” market. FanDuel has partnered with CME Group, a derivatives marketplace, with the intent of developing a fully funded event-based contract model. The NCAA will continue its partnership with Genius. The two announced a contract extension to 2032 earlier this year.