Anti-online gambling Aussie senator calls for ban on eSports betting

Anti-online gambling Australian senator Nick Xenophon is on the warpath again, and this time it is eSports skin betting in his sights.

Over the weekend Xenophon was widely reported in local media as opining that eSports betting was not only the new unregulated Wild West of online gambling, but that it targets the underaged.

He said that he intends to approach parliament next month with a proposal that video games should be classified as gambling.

“This is the Wild West of online gambling that is actually targeting kids,” Xenophon said, adding that the “insidious” games played by hundreds of thousands of Australian teenagers “purport to be one thing” but are “morphing into full-on gambling and that itself is incredibly misleading and deceptive.

Xenophon said he plans to push a bill to include certain video games under the Interactive Gambling Act, claiming that popular games such as Counter-Strike: Global Offensive are “grooming” children for gambling through trading and betting on skins – decorated accessories and weapons used in the games.

In an interview with the Sydney Morning Herald Xenophon said the 2001 Act was outdated, and “may as well be 150 years old in terms of dealing with these issues”.

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