ESIC suspends seven esports players for betting
The Esports Integrity Commission has suspended the CS:GO players for a year for betting on matches.
UK.- The Esports Integrity Commission (ESIC) has suspended seven Counter-Strike: Global Offensive (CS:GO) players from the Mountain Dew League (MDL) in Australia.
It suspended the players for 12 months each for betting on matches. Some players had bet on matches in which they themselves played.
The seven players include Stephen “Sjanastasi” Anastasi of Team Lakers, Daryl “Mayker” May of Ground Zero Gaming, Akram “Akram” Smida and Corey “Netik” Browne, both from Rooster.
The other players banned are Damian “JD/The Real Goat” Simonovic, Carlos “Rackem” Jefferys and Joshua “Jhd” Hough-Devine, all from Team Rooster 2.
The players will be banned from all competitive CS:GO run or promoted by ESIC members, including the leading organisers ESL, DreamHack, WePlay and Blast.
ESIC has not said which players bet on their own matches. Betting on any matches within a player’s own sport is itself a violation of the ESIC Anti-Corruption Code.
It said that several “associates” had also bet on the players’ matches, with some bets mirroring players’ own wagers. This is also a violation of the code.
ESIC asked professional esports players to remember that betting on events could present a major fraud and integrity risk for esports.
It said: “Without a unified understanding of the implications of inappropriate betting behaviour and observance of anti-corruption mechanisms, esports runs the risk of facilitating attractive fraud opportunities for bad actors.
“Accordingly, it is important that professional players understand that breaches of ESIC’s Anti-Corruption Code are a serious concern.
“It is crucially important that professional players (at the very least) abstain from placing bets on the game in which they earn an income from in order to preserve the integrity of the esports landscape internationally and mitigate the potential for bad actors to take advantage of our sport.”
ESIC is looking into anti-corruption breaches in the MDL in both Australia and North America, including potential instances of match-fixing.
It has also banned a number of coaches for exploiting a bug in CS:GO to feed information to their teams.
