NCAA partners with IC360 to bolster integrity monitoring ahead of Division I championships
The NCAA has integrated ProhiBet from compliance consultancy IC360 into its sports integrity processes for the upcoming Division I men’s and women’s basketball, baseball, and softball championships.
The tool monitors officials, such as athletes, coaches, and other league personnel, who are normally prohibited from wagering.
ProhiBet uses a secure network to access data, which it then cross-checks with sportsbook operators to identify potential bettors.
Mark Hicks, NCAA Managing Director of Enforcement, said, “Implementing ProhiBet is a major step in increasing integrity protections for college sports. 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.”
Scott Sadin, Co-Chief Executive of IC360, added, “We’re thrilled to welcome the NCAA to the ProhiBet network and are honored to help protect the integrity of these iconic Division I championships. This collaboration sets a new industry benchmark and reinforces the importance of proactive deterrence and detection in keeping collegiate athletics fair.”
In December, IC360 partnered with Major League Table Tennis to provide its sports betting technology for the 25-26 season.
Charlotte Capewell brings her passion for storytelling and expertise in writing, researching, and the gambling industry to every article she writes. Her specialties include the US gambling industry, regulator legislation, igaming, and more.
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The Backstory
What is driving the NCAA’s latest integrity move
The NCAA’s decision to fold IC360’s ProhiBet tool into its integrity workflow for the Division I basketball, baseball and softball championships reflects how quickly college sports is adapting to a bigger, faster betting market. ProhiBet is designed to flag prohibited bettors — athletes, coaches and staff barred from wagering — by securely cross-checking identities against sportsbook accounts. It adds a hard compliance gate to the NCAA’s monitoring, which until recently leaned more on education, reporting lines and traditional analytics. The timing is not incidental. With March basketball a peak wagering event and legal markets maturing in dozens of states, the risk calculus for regulators, sportsbooks and leagues has shifted from theoretical to immediate. The move complements existing oversight and signals the NCAA will deploy vendor tech when speed and scale are essential.
The push also follows a broader recognition among operators that first-line controls must move closer to the point of wager. Banned-bettor blocks, real-time alerts and privacy-preserving data exchanges are displacing after-the-fact sweeps. ProhiBet’s encrypted architecture is meant to satisfy both compliance and privacy, a tension that has dogged data sharing between leagues and books. While the NCAA framed the rollout as “another layer,” the functional change is substantive: enforcement starts before bets land, not only after patterns appear.
Warning signs from recent betting anomalies
Recent investigations have underscored the stakes. A multi-jurisdiction betting probe identified suspected point shaving across at least 11 men’s college basketball games from early December through mid-January, centering on small-conference matchups and concentrated first-half spread action. According to an ESPN-sourced report on a suspected gambling syndicate, nine U.S. sportsbooks across 13 states and one Canadian province flagged the same signals. Some bettors reportedly opened new accounts or returned from dormancy to place outsized, repetitive wagers on identical markets — behavior often used by integrity teams as a precondition for closer scrutiny. Federal authorities and the NCAA are examining potential match fixing that has already led to athlete bans at one university and inquiries involving several others.
The alleged scheme’s mechanics are a reminder that college contests, especially outside power conferences, can be high-risk targets due to lower officiating resources, limited broadcast visibility and thinner sportsbook limits that still allow coordinated plays to move prices. While books’ in-house models can catch outlier flows, cross-operator coordination and league-level datasets are increasingly required to confirm and act on patterns. That is the gap the NCAA is attempting to close with a system that checks the eligibility of would-be bettors tied to teams and competitions. It is also why integrity vendors have been moving to standardize dashboards and alerts used by leagues, books and regulators.
IC360’s growing footprint in college athletics
IC360 has been building a college portfolio that demonstrates how conferences can centralize monitoring while tailoring education and enforcement to campus realities. The Southland Conference, which includes programs in Texas and Louisiana, adopted the firm’s Integrity Monitoring Dashboard and ProhiBet, pairing technical controls with workshops for athletes, coaches and administrators. The league said the approach institutionalizes fair-play norms and equips members to spot risks earlier. The arrangement, described in coverage of IC360’s Southland Conference partnership, shows how mid-major leagues are not waiting for headline incidents before upgrading compliance.
The vendor has also aligned with operators looking to tighten internal surveillance. Daily fantasy and sportsbook operator Betr said it would integrate IC360’s dashboard and the prohibited-bettor tool to create a “secure, transparent” betting environment. The company emphasized real-time detection and self-exclusion tech that meets specific jurisdictional rules, according to news of Betr’s partnership with IC360. For the NCAA, these dual-track relationships — with both leagues and books — matter. When the same monitoring logic and identity controls exist on both sides of the fence, anomalies are easier to corroborate and prohibited activity is easier to block.
Building a broader monitoring web beyond U.S. borders
Integrity risks bleed across markets, which is why IC360 has extended its reach through data and geography partnerships. A tie-up with sports data provider LSports opens access to IC360 monitoring for clients in Latin America, with plans to expand in North America. The integration routes wagering insights through a dashboard calibrated to local regulatory baselines, an approach detailed in IC360’s partnership with LSports. While the NCAA’s competitions are U.S.-centric, international liquidity can still touch niche markets and player props. Aligning alert standards and data pipelines across regions reduces blind spots that can arise when suspicious wagers originate offshore or in adjacent jurisdictions.
IC360 has also bolstered its leadership bench to navigate cross-border rules and operator practices. The firm named Jon Russell, a veteran trading executive and former chair of the International Betting Integrity Association, as a senior advisor. His background in multi-jurisdictional trading and anti-manipulation efforts suggests a focus on harmonizing integrity protocols with how sportsbooks actually manage risk day to day. The appointment, reported in IC360’s addition of Jon Russell as senior advisor, supports the company’s international push and responsiveness to operator workflows that can determine how quickly suspicious activity is escalated.
From anomaly detection to prohibited-bettor prevention
Early-stage integrity tech concentrated on spotting statistical irregularities and betting patterns. The market has since shifted to blend analytics with identity controls. By adopting ProhiBet, the NCAA is leaning into that second pillar — screening would-be bettors tied to college programs before wagers clear. The mechanism is straightforward: encrypt sensitive identities, match them against book accounts and alert or block when necessary. It mirrors how corporate compliance treats insider lists in capital markets and how player protection tools prevent self-excluded customers from placing bets.
Conference-level deployments, like the Southland’s, illustrate how education and tooling can reinforce each other. Workshops that explain what triggers alerts, why certain markets pose higher risks and how information moves between teams and books can reduce accidental violations and deter willful ones. On the operator side, partnerships like Betr’s underscore how front-end blocks and back-end monitoring reduce both regulatory exposure and reputational risk. The NCAA’s adoption creates a common language for alerts between the league and its bookmaker counterparts, which could shorten response times during marquee events.
The stakes for March and beyond
The upcoming men’s and women’s basketball tournaments will test whether pre-bet identity screening and tighter data sharing can blunt prohibited activity before it escalates. The suspected syndicate case shows how quickly coordinated wagers can span states and operators. It also reveals the limits of fragmented oversight when leagues, conferences and books operate on different systems. The NCAA’s addition of ProhiBet brings direct prevention to the championship stage and signals to conferences and books that harmonized tools are now table stakes.
There is also a longer runway. Baseball and softball championships draw smaller handles than basketball but present similar exposure through player props and in-game markets. Integrating identity controls across seasons and sports, then extending them to more conferences, could create network effects that raise the cost of manipulation attempts. IC360’s expansion into new leagues, operators and regions — and its investment in experienced trading and integrity leadership — suggests vendors are positioning for that sustained buildout. The near-term measure of success will be fewer red flags and faster interventions. The longer-term goal is quieter headlines as prevention moves upstream of detection.
