by Christian Aichinger
Online gambling has been in existence since the early 1990s. Just like e-cigs today, it was unregulated in its infancy. Since then, the United States have increased their regulation on it. Over in Europe, all forms of online gambling is completely legal with very few regulations. There are two main types of online gambling: online casinos, and online sports betting. Both are technically legal here, but there’s plenty of gray area. The Unlawful Internet Gaming Enforcement Act of 2006 was created to stop financial institutions in the U.S. from processing payments related to online gambling sites. In the law, it never states that online gambling is in fact illegal, it just makes it much harder to deposit and withdraw from online betting sites. Many reliable, and legal options exist today for American gamers can buy a prepaid card, or get a wire transfer through no connection to an American bank.
The question is, what does all of this mean for the player? Assuming I was 18, or 21 (depending on the restriction from the local or state government) I could legally place a sports bet, or play on an online casino with real money. As of today, zero players have been arrested and sentenced to jail time for online sports betting or participating in an online casino (only two people have been arrested and fined $500 for online sports betting). The problem lies with the Online Sportsbook (an online sports betting site) or online casino. Most online casinos or sportsbooks located in the U.S. either were shut down, only offer play money betting, or were charged with someone and were forced to shut down. Even many casinos and sportsbooks (including pinnaclesports.com, a major Sportsbook) that are located outside of the U.S. refuse to take U.S customers because of the gray area that U.S. law creates. That doesn’t mean U.S players are out of luck. We (people of age) still have many online sportsbooks and casinos available to use that are located out of country.
Keeping all that in mind, the fastest growing, and very profitable new sport being opened up on online sportsbooks is e-Sports. E-Sports consist of video games being played for a cash prize. The title of e-Sports is itself controversial for mundane reasons, some claiming its not actually a sport, but a competition. Regardless, many online sportsbooks feature e-Sports as a main attraction. The main, and most profitable games played in e-Sports at the moment are Dota 2, League of Legends, Counter Strike: Global Offensive, and Starcraft 2. E-Sports certainly isn’t limited to those four, but those are the most profitable in terms of gambling, and cash prizes for the tournaments. The peak events for e-Sports betting would be around the year International for Dota 2 (last prize pool totaled $10,931,103, and its growing each year in a semi crowd funded prize pool), and League of Legends World Championship yearly (current prize pool totaled at 2,130,000).
While most e-Sports betting is with real money, a massive chunk of Dota 2 betting is through a site by the name of Dota 2 Lounge. The Lounge is a place where players can trade their in-game, cosmetic items among other players. The most used feature of the site however, is the feature to bet on pro matches. The player trades items he/she wishes to bet to an automated bot to hold onto the items while the game plays out. With a limit of four items per match, each item having a different dollar amount, the player will get returns (in items) based on the odds of the team they bet on. The items are then transferred to the players Steam (the gaming client home to Dota 2) inventory, which they can use, or continue betting with. Another feature with steam (can be used by Counter Strike: Global Offensive as well as Dota 2) is that you can sell your in game items on a marketplace to other players for steam cash, which in return you can use to buy items in game. Steam announced they plan on implementing a feature in the near future where you can cash out steam cash and turn it into real money. This feature set (Dota 2 Lounge, the steam marketplace, and cashing out) is all available to people who are under the age of 18 or 21.
Online betting on e-Sports isn’t without its scandals. On June 16th 2013 during the Starladder Dota 2 tournament, Alexei Berezin, known as Solo in game, received a lifetime ban from the tournament for betting against his team zRage. He then proceeded to throw (intentionally lose) the game. This scandal coined the phrase ‘322’, because thats the dollar amount Solo placed against his team. Even in other professional games, in different e-Sports, the phrase ‘322’ is still used by commentators, and watchers of the match when it appears someone is doing bad on purpose.
