Professional and college sports leagues have been cracking down hard on players who break sports betting rules, but now some athletes accused are cracking back. Twenty-five current and former student athletes from the University of Iowa and Iowa State University have filed a suit against several departments of the state of Iowa due to accusations they broke Iowa sports betting laws.
These athletes are seeking damages as a result of investigations into their sports betting while they were in college. Lawyers representing these players specified that their rights were violated by state departments searching them, and in some instances, investigators lied to them in order to gather information from the players.
Two of the players specifically named in the lawsuit are Broncos defensive lineman Eyioma Uwazurike, who missed all of the 2023 NFL season due to suspension from gambling violations, and Noah Shannon, who may get drafted this weekend.
At the heart of the players’ suit is Iowa’s use of a tracking software called GeoComply when investigating the players. The lawyers representing the players believe that there was no evidence of illegal gambling activity, yet the state tracked them with GeoComply and uncovered the betting.
Suspensions and even criminal proceedings followed, and the argument is essentially that there was no probable cause to track any of the players and thus the investigations were almost like an online “stop and frisk” policy.
College sports betting is a bit of a hot topic in the industry right now. Some states are expanding it — most notably Connecticut, which just moved to allow for in-state college betting after UConn’s Men’s Basketball Team won its second straight national championship. Others like LLouisiana, however, are following the NCAA’s guide and have moved to ban player prop betting on college sports.
