How cybersports are taking over the betting market

Cybersports is the youngest form of sports discipline. Within a very short time, however, it has become hugely popular around the world. The cyber disciplines have their own star-status players, and the viewership is quite comparable to that of fans of many traditional sports. It is estimated that there are around half a billion cybersports fans in the world, regularly watching the competitions and streaming the top athletes.

Of course, such a dynamically developing sport could not remain outside the attention of bookmakers. EGamingBets pioneered cybersports betting. And StarCraft II was the first discipline on which betting was accepted.

At this stage, eSports is of course still far away from e.g. football or tennis in terms of the amount of money accumulated in this sector. However, the results are still impressive. In particular, in 2021, the total profit of betting companies in the segment of betting on cybersports was more than 2.5 billion dollars. And this is despite the fact that five years earlier this figure was “only” $59 million.

As for the games, the undisputed leaders are CS:GO and Dota II. They account for about 75% of the total volume of bets in eSports.

Of course, there is a “second side of the coin” to all this. There isn’t a single sport betting on which there isn’t a fraudulent betting game. And in cybersport, despite its “teenage” age, such scandals have already abounded.

One of the first big scandals took place in the birthplace of eSports, South Korea, in 2011 at a StarCraft II tournament. The player Ma Jae-yoon conceived a scam that involved 11 athletes and several bookies. The total profit from this scam was expected to be around $35,000. However, the scam was uncovered and Ma Jae-yoon was sentenced to two years’ suspended imprisonment for the fraud, as well as stripped of all sporting titles. 

In 2013, one of the leading Dota II players, Russian Alexey Berezin, was involved in a high-profile scandal. Playing for the favourite team, he bet on its defeat, wishing to make money on an advantageous odds in this case, but his anonymous account was quickly disclosed by the bookmaker’s security service. The player got off with a “minor scare”: he was only disqualified for one year.

In 2014, one of the leading Counter Strike teams at the time, iBUYPOWER, decided to make $10,000 by intentionally losing a tournament where it was the undisputed favourite. The team’s players bet on her loss, expecting to be paid at the highest odds. But the scam came to light and the team was punished with a lifetime suspension.

The scam cost the career of one of StarCraft II’s top players, Lee Soon-hyun. South Korean prosecutors proved that the cyber sportsman made a total of about $62,000 with betting and match-fixing scams. Lee Soon-hyun received a hefty fine and a suspended prison sentence from the state, and a lifetime disqualification from the gaming community.   

In the history of cyber sports betting scams, there is also a case of curiosity. In one Dota II tournament, two teams were unable to complete a match because they played a giveaway against each other despite having very strong players in their line-up. It was later revealed that both teams had bet on their own defeat in the tournament in order to make money. The hapless cheaters escaped punishment, as the gaming community decided that they had had enough of a devastating blow to their reputation.