The investigations into bribery and match-fixing in North American CS: GO has been ongoing for a long time, dating back to September 2020, when the ESIC said it was looking into match-fixing in the ESEA MDL. When discussing the matter, Ian Smith, the chairman of the ESIC, stated that they are looking into individuals betting on themselves as well as being bribed to toss their matches.
The esports business, with numerous competitions, is no novice to fraudulent betting and match-fixing. A top Starcraft pro was found guilty in 2016 of receiving £42,000 bribery to lose two matches.
Earlier in 2021, ESIC convicted 35 CS: GO pros in Australia guilty of betting charges and condemned them to tournament bans ranging from one to five years. Given that the bulk of esports athletes quit in their mid-twenties, five years might seem like an eternity. For these allegations, ESIC started to conduct investigations in 2020 and the number of inspections was defined as 15.
ESIC has now partnered with the FBI, which has just lately established its own internal sports betting investigation section.
According to reports, the Esports Integrity Commission (ESIC) is collaborating with the FBI to prosecute coordinated Counter-Strike: Global Offensive (CS:GO) match-fixing incidents and betting on CS:GO games syndicates in North America. Apart from that, in an interview with YouTuber “Slash32”, ESIC’s Integrity Commissioner Ian Smith says that North America in terms of gaming and e-sport has quite a wider range of problems than Australia.
The inquiry, according to Smith, has two components. He claims that ESIC would ban a tiny group of gamers for a “very, very long period,” stating that the ESIC is “dealing with fools.”
However, as Smith stated, this event is part of a much wider inquiry which might take time to finish: ‘There has been, over a significant period of time, coordinated match-fixing in the North America MDL among a very small but important set of gamers.’
Smith went on to describe the MDL case as “typical match-fixing,” with “individuals being bribed by outside betting syndicates to manipulate tournaments instead of players doing that and off their own backs shrewdly.”
The comprehensive investigation into the outside betting cartels is still continuing, with the criminal justice system, including the FBI, participating. Smith, on the other hand, is confident that specifics of certain discoveries involving the small sample of players would be made public within 10 to 14 days.
Individuals that gambled on matches at ESIC member tournaments, including their own or their team’s matches, were sanctioned. The sanctions range from a “level one” 12-month suspension for match betting to a “level five” 60-month ban for aggravated betting against their own club.
The ESIC suspended 35 Australian players in January 2021 for violating its anti-corruption rule. It comes after seven players were barred from playing in 2020.
In 2020, as well, 37 coaches (those in charge of teams of players) were disqualified for abusing a glitch that granted them free access to some portions of the game’s maps.
Piers Harding-Rolls, director of research at Ampere Analysis, stated that the ethics of eSports is “equal to its financial potential.”
“Anything that undermines this would have broader commercial repercussions for an industry that frequently struggles with profitability,” he warned.
Earlier in September 2020, ESIC indicated up to 15 active investigations that they consider are serious. Only a month after their formal release, the players were caught up in an ongoing investigation as a consequence of October 2020 match-fixing. The discoveries were critical enough that the FBI’s intervention was required.