Esports consumer perspectives on match-fixing: implications for gambling awareness and game integrity

ABSTRACT

This article examines consumer perspectives on match-fixing in esports – professionalized competitive video game play – and the implications of these perspectives for understanding game and gambling integrity. The relationship between match-fixing, game integrity and gambling is a close one, as gambling markets are reliant on strong game integrity, but has not yet been studied in detail in the context of esports. Drawing on extensive qualitative data collected from esports fans around the world, this article examines perceptions of gambling awareness, integrity and esports gambling to assess esports consumers’ awareness of and attitudes towards gambling-related match-fixing. Results indicate that esports viewers are not deeply concerned by match-fixing. In addition, spectators typically view gambling as a cause of corruption among competitors, but also understand and accept some elements of the practice. Further, spectators tend to rely on rules to determine their assessment of what is ‘wrong’, rather than assessments based on ethics, and are often willing to forgive infractions through a range of reasons and justifications. We propose a need for education among esports spectators, extending existing anti-cheating programmes beyond just athletes to include the broader esports community.

KEYWORDS:

• Gambling
• cheating
• match-fixing
• game integrity
• esports
• gaming

Conflicts of interest

Competing interests

The authors declared no competing interests. Dr. Abarbanel is a co-Director of the Nevada Esports Alliance (NVEA), of which Esports Integrity Coalition (ESIC) is a member. ESIC provided the data used in this study. Neither ESIC nor NVEA had any input on data analysis, interpretation, manuscript preparation, nor decisions relating to submissions

Constraints on publishing

The authors declared no constraints on publishing.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Association Cluster Sport International, Kansspelautoriteit, Gamification Group (Finland); Gambling Research Exchange Ontario and Alberta Health Services, and travel reimbursement; Alberta Gambling Research Institute and GambleAware UK.

Notes on contributors

Brett Abarbanel

Brett Abarbanel is director of research at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, International Gaming Institute, with a joint appointment at the UCLA Gambling Studies Program. Her research covers Internet gambling policy and behaviour, esports and gambling, operations and technology use, and responsible gambling and community relations. She is the co-executive editor of the UNLV Gaming Research & Review Journal and editorial board member at International Gambling Studies and Harvard’s Division on Addiction’s Brief Addiction Science Information Source. She serves on the International Advisory Panel for Singapore’s National Council on Problem Gambling, and sits on the advisory boards for Leet LLC and Global iGaming Summit and Expo. She is a founding director of the Nevada Esports Alliance, which promotes development of best practices at the intersection of the esports and regulated gambling industries.

Mark R. Johnson

Mark R. Johnson is a Killam postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Political Science at the University of Alberta. His research focuses on the intersections between play and money, such as Esports, live streaming and Twitch.tv, daily fantasy sports, loot boxes, gamification, and gamblification, and their impacts on contemporary leisure, labour, and culture. He has published in journals including Information, Communication and Society, Social Studies of Science, The Sociological Review, Convergence, Games and Culture and the Journal of Virtual Worlds Research. His first monograph, The Unpredictablity of Gameplay, a Deleuzean examination of luck, chance and randomness in game design and their impacts on video game cultures, was recently published by  Bloomsbury Academic. He is currently developing two new monograph projects, one into the labour dynamics of video game live streaming, and another into the design and ideological content of daily fantasy sports platforms. Outside academia he is also an independent game designer, a regular games blogger and podcaster, a freelance writer for numerous gaming publications, and a former professional poker player.