NCAA To Monitor March Madness Officials For Suspicious Betting Activity
Jesse M. Cox Published 26/03/2026
The NCAA intends to ensure that its game officials are entirely above reproach. As the NCAA men’s basketball tournament begins on Tuesday, all game officials selected to work March Madness games are being monitored by integrity technology that will immediately flag any of them should they become involved in betting in any form.
Every referee chosen to work the NCAA tournament is being monitored by ProhiBet. This technology, created by Integrity Compliance 360 (IC360), crosschecks anonymized identification data with sportsbooks to flag impermissible bettors.
IC360 works with several sports leagues and sportsbooks to track the betting market. The NCAA utilizes the technology to check that student-athletes and other team personnel aren’t violating NCAA rules by betting on sports.
This will be the first instance in which the monitoring software is used to keep tabs on game officials. It will also be in place to monitor officials for the NCAA women’s basketball tournament, the women’s softball tournament, and the men’s baseball tournament. Over 200 officials will be working these national championship competitions.
This technology would immediately identify any game official who places a bet or opens a sportsbook account during tournament play. Any official caught doing this could be subject to immediate removal from the tournament.
"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 media 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."
Over two dozen of the leading online sports betting sites in the U.S. market employ ProhiBet technology. Many NCAA schools also subscribe to the service.
NCAA basketball was recently the victim of significant betting scandals
This action taken by the NCAA to safeguard its integrity follows on the heels of a college basketball betting scandal that was unearthed last year. A total of 26 people, including 20 college basketball players past and present from 17 different schools, were implicated in a major point-shaving scheme.
Players were found to have taken bribes from gamblers to manipulate more than 30 basketball games between 2023 and 2025. Players and team staff were also found by prosecutors to have shared confidential information on injuries with bettors.
While no game officials were involved in the scandal, the NCAA is being proactive by taking this measure. The move provides another layer of oversight to insulate college basketball games from further scandals.
The NCAA’s efforts to protect the integrity of college basketball appear to be having a positive impact. Incidents of suspicious betting activity on NCAA men’s basketball games were down significantly during the 2025-26 season.
"We haven't had new, credible reports of games being compromised this season," NCAA vice president of enforcement Jon Duncan told ESPN.
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