When we look at the sports betting market, we are confident that its integrity will not be compromised. We also imagine that we can see if that is the case. But what happens if you pull on computer games?
Brett Abarbanel is research director at the University of Nevada in Las Vegas, International Gaming Institute. He is also an Assistant Professor at UNLV’s William Harrah Hospitality College and an Assistant Research Fellow at the University of Sydney Gambling and Research Center, part of their School of Psychology.
Overall, Brett Abarbanel is the person you want to spend time with. He is a former poker player who grew up on one of the world’s most famous racetracks and studied math all the way to Las Vegas. Oh, and he also loves eSports.
“So my general jurisdiction is gambling research,” he explained, “no matter how broad it sounds, and I’ll cover many of the different topics we do mainly through IGI below – that’s my main home.
“My primary area of expertise is video games, esport games, with a particular focus on competition and related games, but we are also exploring many other areas.”
You can learn a lot more about Brett Abarbanel and his latest research project later by listening to the information podcast, but we’ll start here with his awareness of eSports.
How do you cheat on eSports games?
If you don’t know what eSports is currently Google’s “International Dota 2 Championships,” be prepared to be shocked.
It is the most valuable prize in eSports, with $ 34 million available and more than $ 15 million added to winners. In perspective, it is seven times more than the Wimbledon men’s winner or the U.S. Masters in golf.
It is now a serious business so much that eSports betting has become a multi-billion dollar market. But as eSports betting increases, there is a concern about game strengthening and doping. Abarbanel has researched this and explained what it really means.
“How cheating happens in eSports is very different from cheating in traditional sports because everything happens online.” he said.
“It’s done in a game and a game based on a digital platform instead of a real-life or physical platform.
“If you get into the game, you can add a few extra lines of code or some sort of addition to it, so it’s said that your character can turn the hammer five times with the hammer. Normal.”
He added: “Such software hacking is very difficult to implement, but it is an example of how something like this could work.”
The reason such large-scale software hacking is difficult to achieve is because there are large leagues in the local area network — local area networks — that can be easily protected and managed. But what about smaller matches?
What does eSports do with cheating?
In 2016, the eSports industry established the eSports Integrity Commission to combat new threats of gambling fraud. It has developed into a guardian of the integrity of eSport and developed a set of principles that it must apply to all stakeholders.
Although bookmakers are not considered interested parties, ESIC offers them a special – non-voting – membership as an anti-corruption supporter of gamblers, aware of the information they have already provided in the fight against eSports fraud.
The overall regulation of ESports has also gone hand in hand with the establishment of the European eSports Federation in April this year to bring together administrations from the UK, Belgium, Germany, Austria, Hungary, France, Russia, Slovenia, Serbia, Sweden, Turkey to collect it. and Ukraine.
“I think it’s really good shape,” he said. “It allows people to build on their knowledge of the game. They have all the special skills that you might not have if you’re trying to push eSports into an existing sports federation you’re likely to return to. People who think it’s not okay – or even executives who don’t know games. “
He added: “It’s not necessarily harmful, it can just be ignorance of how some of these games work, which means writing rules for the organizations around them isn’t necessarily based on enough knowledge and expertise.”
The establishment of national and then continental federations for eSports is an important step in convincing leading sports agencies that eSports competes in addition to traditional sports.