Concerns over the rise of eSports gambling

The rise of eSports, and the gambling that increasingly is associated with it, is a cause for concern at the UK Gambling Commission, the GambleAware charity and ESIG, a nascent eSports self-regulatory body, according to a report in The Telegraph newspaper.

Quoting growth figures from the latest IHS Markit study (see previous report) the newspaper notes that since November 2014, the Gambling Commission had contacted 100 unlicensed online gambling sites, and 16 of these were related to gambling using virtual currencies on eSports tournaments.

The Commission found that unregulated third-party websites were on the rise, and there were concerns that the youthful demographic that principally makes up the eSports audience would be “lured into gambling”, the newspaper reported, observing that this issue is now a “key focus” for the Gambling Commission.

The problem gambling charity GambleAware is also worried, with chief executive Marc Etches telling the Telegraph that the charity is “very alert” to the eSports issue and the potential problem gambling dangers that it represents. He said that the subject will heavily feature on the agenda at GambleAware’s conference at the end of the year.

“We’ll be asking what implications this has for minimalising gambling-related harm in the future,” he said. “Gambling is everywhere and technology makes it very accessible. One specific thing we will be exploring is this convergence between gaming and gambling, which is very real.”

Ian Smith, the head of the first eSports self-regulatory body Esport Integrity Coalition (ESIG) said he understood the concerns being expressed regarding the thin boundary between eSports and gambling, and the impact this could have in the near future.

He said his organisation was trying to prevent the incursion of undesirable elements, but that eSports is now presently a “coherent industry” which ESIG was trying to bring together.

“ESIG is as close as it gets to some form of regulatory body,” he said. “We are literally in the process of recruiting members to ESIG one by one and it’s a long and tedious process.”

The lack of an established regulatory body and few formal relationships between eSports providers and gambling companies makes it a potentially attractive target for unregulated gambling sites, mainly because data collection is unreliable which makes it easier to defraud people, he opined.

The Telegraph noted that the Gambling Commission was engaging with major games development and financial processing companies to weed out unlicensed eSports betting providers.

“We are targeting the lifeblood of these businesses and Mastercard and Visa have agreed to work together with us, support which is key,” a Gambling Commission spokeswoman said.

The Telegraph article closes with the observation that super-corporates like Amazon also have an interest in ensuring the integrity of eSports, pointing out that the company bought streaming platform Twitch and its 55 million-strong database three years ago for $970 million

“It will no doubt be keen to help regulators, like its peers in the payment processing world, tackle anything which could give the sector a bad name, as will Tencent, the Chinese internet giant, which dominates the Asian nation’s eSports market and this month announced the forthcoming launch of a dedicated esports TV channel, ESPTV,” the Telegraph concludes.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2017/05/13/gaming-gambling-rising-risk-esports/