NCAA Report Uncovers Jarring Online Abuse Towards Women Student-Athletes During the 2024 March Madness Tournament

The National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) recently released its first-ever online harassment report, which uncovered jarring and persistent online abuse primarily targeted towards women student athletes during the 2023-2024 academic year.

In partnership with Signify Group, the NCAA utilized AI tools to study over 1.3 million online comments on the social media profiles of athletes, coaches, and officials during the championship tournaments in women’s volleyball, football, men’s and women’s basketball, women’s gymnastics, softball, and baseball during the 2023-2024 season. Out of the 1.3 million comments, the AI-based algorithm flagged 72,000 messages as potentially abusive. The researchers verified that more than 5,000 comments did in fact contain abusive, discriminatory, or threatening content. The NCAA reported all these comments to their respective social media platforms to take action.

The report found that the most frequent type of online abuse was sexual harassment, representing 18 percent of all negative commentary, followed by general abuse (17 percent), sexism (14 percent), sports betting and match-fixing (12 percent), and homophobia and transphobia (9 percent). The vast majority of these comments (80 percent) were made during the men’s and women’s March Madness tournaments, with women basketball players receiving three times more threats than their male peers. One unnamed student athlete received over 1,400 abusive comments in just two weeks.

“I’ve heard too many student-athletes talk about abusive messages they have received, and for the first time ever, we now have evidence of the scale at which this is occurring. It’s incredibly alarming and completely unacceptable,” said NCAA President Charlie Baker. “Fans have to do better, social media companies have to do more to identify and remove this content, and we all need reminders about responsible social media usage. Student-athletes come to college hoping to fulfill their athletic and academic dreams, and our job at the NCAA is to provide them with the most fulfilling experience possible. We will exhaust all options to reduce the harassment and vitriol student-athletes are experiencing too often today.”