Counter-Strike tournaments have increasingly been plagued by instances of match fixing, whereby players are bribed by betting organizations and other groups to engage in fixed competitions that end in a pre-determined result. Apparently, the problem has gotten so bad that it’s drawn the attention of the FBI, whose sports betting investigative unit has now been tasked to weed out some of the bad actors. Ian Smith, the commissioner of Esports Integrity Commission (ESIC), revealed this in a recent chat with YouTuber slash32 and explained that the problem lied with a “small but significant group of players.”
“[It’s] what I would describe as classic match fixing — players being bribed by outside betting syndicates in order to fix matches, rather than players just doing it off their own bat opportunistically, and it’s being going on for longer, it’s much more organised. So again, to some extent we’re working with law enforcement and the FBI, who only recently have had a sports betting investigative unit within the FBI. They’re good, but they’re inexperienced, because sports betting has never been a big thing in America until recently, so everybody’s kind of finding their feet on that one,” Smith said.