By Carla Jaeger
If not for the Olympic rings plastered throughout the auditorium, you might be surprised to learn this was an Olympic event.
Two lanky teenagers in polo shirts sit tensely in ergonomic office chairs on either side of the stage while marshalling officials check their gaming equipment.
Nigel Tan of Team Singapore competes in the virtual taekwondo event at Olympic Esports Week. Credit: Getty Images
The lights dim and the packed room falls silent. The two 16-year-olds – Australian Lucas Malissa and American Alexander Feyzjou – are moments away from playing against each other in the popular video game Fortnite.
It’s the final for the shooting event at the world-first Olympic esports series, held in Singapore. Shooting is one of 10 sports staged in the week-long competition.
At these Olympics, athletes compete in traditional sports in non-traditional ways: they use virtual reality headsets to compete in taekwondo, swipe on phone screens to play tennis, ride static bikes in the cycling event and drive stationary cars in motorsports.
The shooting event has a classic gaming set-up: competitors have a keyboard, a mouse and a screen.
“Not many people can do what these players are doing. They’re pushing the limits,” one commentator says halfway through the YouTube livestream for the shooting final.
Minutes later, Malissa is crowned as the world’s best digital aimer in Fortnite. A defeated Feyzjou sinks into his cushioned seat.
This week-long International Olympic Committee-run competition highlights the growing legitimacy of esports, a billion-dollar industry that has expanded into dedicated arenas, professional leagues, passionate fan bases, and substantial prize pools.
But its rapid rise has detectives from Victoria Police’s sports integrity unit worried that young gamers involved in esports are at risk of being targeted by organised crime syndicates.
The teen winners of the Olympic esports shooting event take the podium in Singapore: silver winner Alexander “Boltz” Feyzjou (left), champion Lucas “anon” Malissa and bronze winner Andrej “Merstach” Piratov. Credit: Getty Images
While there’s no suggestion of suspicious activity at last month’s event, the detectives’ concerns are great enough that the unit has joined forces with the Esports Integrity Commission (ESIC) to track suspicious betting activity related to esports.
“This ... will see ESIC sharing real-time suspicious betting alerts – particularly from offshore wagering operators – with our detectives, allowing for investigations into suspected match fixing to commence almost immediately,” Assistant Commissioner Chris Gilbert said.
The unit, responsible for investigating high-profile cases such as the AFL’s Brownlow betting scandal, led Australia’s first investigation into esports match fixing in 2019.
Kylian Drumont of Team France celebrates after winning the Gran Turismo motor sport finals on day four of the Olympic Esports WeekCredit: Getty Images
That investigation began after a tip-off from a wagering operator that flagged suspicious betting activity. Six months later, six men accused of illegally betting on their defeats in the popular shooting game Counter-Strike: Global Offensive were arrested, four in Melbourne and two in Perth.
Part of the concern with esports, said Gilbert, is the demographic of those competing: “Players can be potentially more vulnerable targets than players involved in traditional sports.
“They are often young adults who could be more susceptible to corrupt approaches by criminal entities due to minimal prize money and a lack of focus on integrity and education by game developers,” he said.
The Esports Integrity Commission’s global strategy director, Stephen Hanna, said he ended up counselling some of the men who were arrested in the 2019 scandal.
“It was very, very sloppy and stupid ... they didn’t understand the implication [of what they were doing],” Hanna said.
The men, who were a mix of former school and university classmates, made just under $10,000 profit from fixing in the ESEA-Mountain Dew League.
Victoria Police sports integrity unit officers (from left) James Moller (senior project officer), Detective Senior Constable Andrew Stanley and Detective Senior Sergeant Jason Poulton. Credit: Joe Armao
Although match fixing carries a maximum 10-year sentence, all five offenders (one of the six arrested was not charged) avoided jail and criminal records.
Hanna said there was temptation for gamers to make a few thousand dollars by fixing a game because prizemoney was minimal at the non-elite level and the activity was less likely to be detected by authorities.
“It’s not necessarily the case that they’re all really young kids and therefore are corruptible,” he said.
“[The players are] easily approachable ... especially when it’s like, ‘Hey if you can fix for us in this one sub-tournament within this massive online tournament that nobody’s ever going to feel around ...’”
In 2022, a 25-year-old and a 26-year-old appeared before Melbourne Magistrates’ Court for fixing an online video game competition, Lets Play Live 2021 Valorant Autumn Legends Cup. The pair, who discussed fixing the match on Facebook Messenger, also avoided convictions, receiving diversion orders instead.
But while low-level tournaments may be the most common area for match fixing to take place, there have been instances of elite competitors engaging in match fixing.
In 2016, the esports community was rocked after a 19-year-old global champion from South Korea was convicted of match fixing two games for $93,000.
Lee “Life” Seung Hyun, once considered a prodigy StarCraft II player, received an 18-month suspended prison term and was banned for life from South Korean esports. Hyun did not act alone – 11 financial backers and brokers were arrested as part of the investigation.
Part of the reason for the prevalence of match fixing in esports is the reliance low-level tournaments have on betting revenue. In 2020, the volume of esports bets was more than 100 times higher than the volume of prizemoney, according to a 2022 report by the International Journal of Esports.
“It is reasonable to assume that there are players and teams betting against themselves in order to achieve higher profits through match fixing than would be possible through prize money,” the report said.
The pandemic also accelerated the number of punters and the amount of money being gambled: Esports’ global gambling revenue doubled from $13.3 billion in 2019 to $26.7 billion in 2020.
Jacob Christian “KangGang” Park of Team United States during the WBSC eBaseball: Power Pros third place game on day three of Olympic Esports WeekCredit: Getty Images
“Australians are among the highest demographic globally for esports betting. And that’s because we just generally have a very heavy sort of gambling betting culture, especially sports betting,” Hanna said. “In the pandemic, we saw a sharp rise in suspicious betting alerts. That came to us because essentially, all of the physical sports went offline.”
During this time, Hanna said, criminal activity was rife – fake matches were broadcast as if they were real and reruns of esports tournaments were broadcast as if they were live.
“Because of the fact there were so many novel entrants into the betting space in esports, nobody actually knew better – and that includes the regulators.”
The wide-ranging nature of esports makes it “large enough to get lost in”, Hanna said.
There are one-on-one duels, team-based matches and large-scale tournaments.
The industry is further complicated by a lack of uniformity. While it’s considered an emerging sport by the Australian Institute of Sport, it does not have a formally recognised governing body and does not fall under Sports Integrity Australia’s jurisdiction.
But there have been improvements. Hanna said gaming developers have become a lot better at prioritising integrity concerns. Riot Games, which develops and runs many esports competitions, has its own unit dedicated to competitive integrity and rules.
“But having said that ... there are other publishers that come into esports that don’t have those capabilities and, frankly, do not have an interest in building them because it might not necessarily be a smart [cost decision],” Hanna said.
Sports news, results and expert commentary. Sign up for our Sport newsletter.