Jamie Lamor Thompson / Shutterstock.com
The SEC is making sports gambling education mandatory for all conference athletes starting in the 2026-27 athletic year. The announcement came Wednesday during the league’s spring meetings in Destin, Florida, where commissioners outlined a “custom-designed” program built around an educational video requirement that every athlete must complete before their sport’s regular season kicks off.
It’s not the SEC’s first move in this space. The conference already partnered with IC360 (formerly known as US Integrity), a company that monitors sports betting activity in real time, and this new video requirement adds another layer to that existing framework.
“The Southeastern Conference remains committed to supporting its member institutions and student-athletes through proactive education, monitoring, and resources that promote integrity and protect the student-athlete experience. The rise in sports gambling, including some recent well-documented incidents among college and professional athletics, as well as developments around prediction markets, makes this a high-priority initiative for the Southeastern Conference.” – SEC Commissioner Greg Sankey
The gambling landscape has shifted fast, and the SEC clearly feels the pressure to keep up.
Sankey’s mention of “prediction markets” is worth noting. These platforms, which allow users to bet on the likelihood of real-world outcomes, have started blurring the line between investing and sports gambling in ways that existing NCAA policies weren’t built to address.
The new video program is designed to give athletes “clear, practical guidance on recognizing risks” tied to sports betting, while also walking them through both SEC and NCAA policies on the subject. Ahead of the 2024-25 season, the conference had already begun producing athlete availability reports across football, men’s and women’s basketball, and baseball. Locker room posters and an anonymous tip line for reporting suspicious activity rounded out those earlier efforts; the mandatory video now sits on top of all of it.
Recent gambling-related cases involving college and pro athletes have clearly influenced the SEC’s thinking here. Texas Tech quarterback Brendan Sorsby, for instance, is currently filing an injunction against the NCAA as he looks to secure his 2026 eligibility amid an ongoing gambling probe. Cases like his are exactly the kind of situation the SEC is trying to get ahead of before athletes even step onto the field.
