The Esports Integrity Coalition (ESIC) - an organisation dedicated to improving integrity in esports in the areas of match-fixing, doping, and more - has revealed a new match-fixing summit to be held in Malta today, with organisations like ESL, DreamHack, and Blast Series joining to discussing integrity in esports betting.
The press release talks of an "alarming rise" in suspicious betting over the last 12 months, with 74 alerts being received in 2018 alone, signalling a rise of almost 75%. Dota 2 matches showed a 100% rise alone.
Ian Smith, ESIC Integrity Commissioner, said: "The numbers of suspicious bet notifications being received by ESIC now are alarming. While we're confident that most of the top tier competitions are operating to the highest standards of integrity, we're deeply concerned with what is happening in the lower echelons of esports. We are therefore today calling on game developers of the esports titles to join the other stakeholders and betting operators themselves in supporting additional integrity measures to tackle the issue."
The topics the summit will cover include:
• Improved funding for integrity issues; especially the hiring of a specialist investigator
• Enhanced player education
• A common framework of standards for esports
• A crack-down on unregulated skins and unlicensed betting
"We have a clear focus on what needs to be done and how we need to do it. If we act quickly, and collectively, we can head this growing issue off at the pass. We are delighted that 20 significant esports stakeholders are attending, but this now needs everyone involved; in particular we need all esports related game developers to start taking this issue seriously given that, to date, not one developer has contributed one dollar to our fight for competitive integrity in esports and we are in danger of being overwhelmed. No-one wants to see esports lose its credibility over an easily preventable threat to its integrity," Smith continues.
What does ESIC and its partners need to do?