Biometric Performance Monitoring in Collegiate Sports: Balancing the Benefits with Ethical and Regulatory Considerations

Abstract

Biometric performance data provides invaluable insights into an athlete’s performance, which coaches can utilize to optimize training sessions and help prevent and track player injuries. This research contrasts the importance of biometric performance data in sports with the necessity for protecting that data as it is collected by wearable performance monitoring devices and then utilized within collegiate sports. Several ethical and security concerns are fostered by the lack of explicit regulations protecting student-athletes’ biometric performance data. Therefore, an analysis is provided of the regulated protections provided to professional athletes and collegiate athletes for collecting, storing, and utilizing their performance data. Furthermore, this paper examines the implications of Murphy v. NCAA and its revocation of federal regulations prohibiting sports wagers on both professional and amateur athletics. Finally, this paper presents a set of potential reforms to regulations and legislation that could provide additional safeguards preventing the unauthorized disclosure of student-athlete biometric performance records.