The Negative Aspects of Gambling in Esports

For as long as there have been competitive sports there has been people putting wages on them. It is not different to Esports except lower visibility and lack of being mainstream allowing for many other ways around traditional laws and regulations. Where I live in Australia it is illegal to run a sports gambling operation, even in some countries that it is legal it is highly monitored by the government. They’re reasons for this why gambling is considered such a societal ill by so many different societies, reasons that are completely glossed over. Esports for any other of reason.

In counterstrike people have found a way around this by using an intermediation for gambling being the in game weapon skins which do have a influxuated monetary value that is associated with them never the less the culture behind it and the affect of it are the same than if it cold harsh cash.

A major culture around gambling of counterstrike games has evolved and very open and public culture there are entire YouTube channels for an example that are completely centred around betting on skins the organisation that facilitates the better is an sponsor for many major tournaments and counterstrike personality’s. at the centre of all this is a cold hard fact that has been shown to be true again and again throughout the history of sporting is absolutely irrefutable. Betting leads to corruption when you add a monetary incentive is sort of an underground culture of the outcome of a sporting event bad things are goanna happen, beyond the lack of personality’s responsibility’s to lead to push themselves and family’s financial ruin and cause them to commit criminal acts we have people across the entire sporting culture down to the athletes themselves and involving cbb behaviours what we know as match fixing.

This has happened over and over again as resulting in human nature and cant be really changed, it happens. From football to boxing professional athletes have taken dives to bribes from professional gamblers it destroys integrity of the game. The out come of a sporting event should be the team or athlete who trained harder who performed better who had more skill but instead we’ve seen many instances we’ve seen it being who was given the most money to lose on purpose don’t think that Esports safe from this culture again its human nature Esports people are human to its universal when StarCraft brood war was at the peak of his career in Korea allocation of match fixing was brought up it turn out that professional players were losing on purpose in order to make money off of betting organisations. It greatly damaged the reputation of StarCraft in Korea and Esports a cross the entire world. And it set Esports back big time action was taken and 11 professional players were permanently banned from participation in competitive gaming events. That brings us back to counterstrike we have already seen many incidents, allocations and speculations and facts. That’s this type oh behaviour is present. I’m not going to go through every scandal that has happened.

A game was brought up and played before it was streamed, allowed the players that played in it gave them knowledge on who was going to win to place bets on the match and a sure win on there bets I’ve linked and article that talks about this incidents. Major interest sparked by articles written by Richard Lewis gaming journalist about possible match fixing the cevo leagues there has been a number of allocations in the cevo league in the past I recommend reading these articles that I have linked they point to possible conflict on interest.

Beyond match fixing the unique culture on how Esports is played and has given birth to exciting new forms of corruption. From the people betting on themselves they have the ability to affect the game beyond asking players to lose the game for money. Many people execute disturbed denial of service attach what you see as ddos. If a match isn’t going there way and they want to win there bet they either attack specific players causing them to time out from the game or they attack the game sever itself if they have the chance to get hold of the Ip. Most of the attacking happening now a days are on specific players. We also see a plethora on online raging and hate of specific players and organisations everything and including death threats disgruntles gamblers it makes watching competitive gaming events a real chore the amount of games that have been ruined by these attacks is ridiculous the amount of hate that the players receive is cringe worthy. The hold that gambling organisations have on the scene is deplorable.

Supporters of gambling in Esports points to the befits, which in course there are benefits which manly only one is increased viewership. Many people only tune in to because they only have something writing on the match which makes it more exciting for them this is why we certain leagues and tournaments being directly sponsored by the betting organisation because they have invested interest, in that the gambling increases there numbers so instead of creating a betting viewing experience, instead of people being passionate about the game itself and watching it for the entertainment for it. These organisations have instead relied upon introduction these negative elements in order to increase there viewership it Is a lack of integrity and damages the integrity of the game itself.

There are solution with tradition sports are going with this route with fantasy leagues with ESL, with the way they did there own fantasy league for cologne was brilliant they do this with other Esports as well. But also the way that valve created the pickems challenge was brilliant both engaged viewers, encouraged viewership and it add the extra little something without the negative aspects of gambling you can root and cheer for your way to win but once you remove the direct monetary incentive, corruption magical goes away.