The billion-dollar sports industry that can't keep up with the cheats

ALICE BRENNAN: Hello there, this is Background Briefing, I'm Alice Brennan.

This episode, we are playing games.

And just a little warning before we begin today, with gaming comes some trash talk. And with trash talk comes some good words but also some very very bad words.

Two teams of gamers are sitting in a darkened arena in Shanghai. Their keyboards emit a soft red glow.

ANNOUNCER: Hey everyone welcome back, it's the Extremesland 2018, Asia finals

ALICE BRENNAN: Behind the players are these huge floor-to-ceiling screens and there's a crowd in watching them play.

The teams are about to go head-to-head in the game 'counterstrike'.

ANNOUNCER: Here we go, we'll start with the pistol round here.. See what they can do. They probably heard the door open there so they know that the tasers are out on the side.

ALICE BRENNAN: The two teams are called optic india and revolution, and they're playing in the finals.

On the optic side, one of the star players is this guy called Nikil Kumawat. But he's better known for his gamer tag, Forsaken.

Forsaken is being touted as one of the best counterstrike players in the entire world.

On screen, players are weaving around trying to gun each other down.

SFX - Gunshots

And right now, forsaken is on fire.

ANNOUNCER: Forsaken stole the ace there from Pie Van (fade)...

ALICE BRENNAN: His shots are pinpoint accurate and they're fast ... his crosshairs snap to the head of an opposing player before they appear ... almost like he can see through walls.

ANNOUNCER: Very long spray....Crazy spray there from Forsaken...

ALICE BRENNAN: He's anticipating players' movements and he's hitting them with speed.

His aim is perfect...almost too perfect.

ANNOUNCER: Luckily there's a hole in the smoke, so Forsaken is gonna get some nice positioning on the other side.

ALICE BRENNAN: Then - something's up

ANNOUNCER: looks like we have a bit of a pause here .. they say it's a technical pause.

ALICE BRENNAN: Even the commentators don't know what's going on, so they're trying to kill time

ANNOUNCER: What about yourself, been a good day...been a good day, yep....

ALICE BRENNAN: Eventually they announce that there's something up with Foresaken's computer

ANNOUNCER: There is a bit of a problem with Foresaken's Computer I'm told, so it should be about 5 or 10 minutes.....

ALICE BRENNAN: But this is no simple technical glitch.

On stage, you can see an official walk up to forsaken and start trying to get control of his computer, but Forsaken resists.

And then there's actually bit of a tussle! Forsaken then puts up his hands and he lets the official take over.

Once the officials get hold of his computer, they start searching for something.

And then they find this mysterious file.

Forsaken has smuggled software into the tournament.

And this software allows him to sort of see where players are, even when they're behind walls.

Forsaken has been cheating.

WEB ARCHIVE: what you read is true, Forsaken from Optic India has been caught hacking

ALICE BRENNAN: The announcement shakes the international esports community.

Forsaken becomes a pariah.

WEB COLLAGE: Oh my god, forsaken from Optic India - legend. Fuckin' loser, to put on that brand and fuckin do that, he is lucky that I wasn't fuckin there. Cheating cheating cheating. Delete delete delete, super fast, *Indian* Hacker hacker.

ALICE BRENNAN: So why did he do it? Well, we don't know exactly why he cheated... but I can tell you this - there is a very good incentive. That tournament - that particular tournament that he was playing, at had prize money worth 140 thousand dollars.

Video games just aren't about fun any more, they're also about money. A lot of money. It's one of the fastest growing sports in the world.

But here's a problem. with the lure of money... also comes the lure... of cheating and match-fixing.

And that's exactly what our reporter Mario Christodoulou has been investigating.

Mario - what did you find?

MARIO CHRISTODOULOU: Well the first thing I found was that this industry.. Its a lot bigger than you think. The competition we just heard about, that was in Shanghai, but even in Australia the industry's worth millions, and it's getting bigger.

ALICE BRENNAN: And the prize money as far as I understand it Mario, the prize money on offer for all tournaments combined is over 100 million dollars?

MARIO CHRISTODOULOU: It's around 117 million dollars. I mean some of these players are earning more than elite athletes in traditional sports, you know sports like tennis, by my count it's around 117 million dollars-

ALICE BRENNAN: That is soo much money

MARIO CHRISTODOULOU: It's huge.

ALICE BRENNAN: How much is the industry as a whole worth?

MARIO CHRISTODOULOU: In total the industry's worth about $1.2 billion dollars. And to put that in a bit of perspective, that's about double what the NRL is worth in Australia.

ALICE BRENNAN: And these days you can bet on the games as well, billions are bet on esports every single year.

MARIO CHRISTODOULOU: As esports has become more popular as it's become bigger as the audience numbers have increased.. You've seen this billion dollar gambling market emerge around the world. So you can make money betting on video games.

ALICE BRENNAN: There must be rules and integrity measures in place to stop a lot of the scamming, a lot of the cheating, a lot of the match fixing that comes along with all of this money.

MARIO CHRISTODOULOU: There sort of is.. The regulator in this space is absolutely swamped. They get more than a hundred allegations of match fixing, or fraud and other offences. Every. Single. Day. They're not equipped, by their own admission to stay on top of it and so a lot of the time nothing gets investigated.

ALICE BRENNAN: Ok. So more on that later. Mario where did this all begin, take us back to the very start

MARIO CHRISTODOULOU: Well, I've gotta say I'm a little bit of my gamer myself, so for me I really went back to my gaming roots to start investigating this story

This was the soundtrack to my childhood.

It's the arcade classic. Street Fighter II.

I remember walking down to my local milk bar and playing on these beaten up old arcade machine where you could go head to head in this bare-knuckle fight with a complete stranger.

Soon, I was into Street Fighter's more-gruesome cousin, a fighting game called Mortal Kombat...

And I've never really stopped playing games. These days it's been Japanese Samurai slashers...

...or intense post-apocalyptic shoot em-ups

But the video game industry has changed since I was a kid.

Across the world, this pastime of mine has evolved into a billion-dollar professional sports industry, it's audience is almost 500 million strong - that's bigger than the audience of Rugby Union, American baseball or golf.

And one thing I should mention: no one calls it video games anymore, it's called esports, thanks very much

Last year the World Championships of a game called League of Legends, which is like a fantasy team-based strategy game, got as many viewers as the Superbowl.

In Australia, the industry is in its infancy, but it is growing . It's already worth millions.

The esport revolution is definitely underway.

The most elite esports players can make as much money as traditional sport players, if not more.

There's Australian Counter Strike player JKS...
Otherwise known as Justin Savage.

WEB ARCHIVE: Has he got time, can JKS make it work, right down to the wire, and JKS again, cannot be stopped

MARIO CHRISTODOULOU: He's earned hundreds of thousands of dollars in prize money from more than 80 tournaments.

WEB ARCHIVE: "On to KP"

MARIO CHRISTODOULOU: And then there's Sydney player Damien "kpii" Chok [pronounced KP]

WEB ARCHIVE: KPii is gonna be off the mark

MARIO CHRISTODOULOU: who's earned more than $2.2 million over more than 50 tournaments

WEB ARCHIVE: Newbee are your first grand finalists here

MARIO CHRISTODOULOU: Australia's most successful player Melbourne is Ana Pham who plays the team-based fantasy game DOTA 2 for the team OG

WEBS ARCHIVE: They are the best team in the world, no question.

MARIO CHRISTODOULOU: Last year PHAM and his team took out the richest prize in esports, they won the DOTA 2 International and pocketed around $27 million, of which Ana is reported to have received just over $4 million.

WEB ARCHIVE: They are the best team in the world, no question.

MARIO CHRISTODOULOU: Just think about that for a second - that's about as much as Novak Djokovic earned after winning last year's Australian Open.

And it's not just prize money. On top of the prize money there are also salaries and sponsorship from the likes of Mercedes, Loreal, BMW, Optus, Crown, Intel, CocaCola, Mastercard.

And there are investors in this space piling money into gaming teams, hoping to cash in on what they see as the next big sport.

I'm catching up with an esports investor. He suggested we meet at a discreet coffee spot tucked away in a side alley in the posh inner city suburb of Paddington.

David Harris, is a private equity investor. He's put millions of dollars into esports - here in Australia and across the world.

MARIO CHRISTODOULOU: Hey David
DAVID HARRIS: How are you
MARIO CHRISTODOULOU: Yeah, not too bad. How you're going
DAVID HARRIS: Good, Good

MARIO CHRISTODOULOU: Harris looks like an older version of Mark Zuckerberg, when I see him he's got these faded blue jeans and this grey hoodie.

He was one of the first people to get behind esports here in Australia.

But before that, he was actually running a traditional sport. One of Australia's biggest.

DAVID HARRIS: I was a general manager at the NRL for two and a half years. My view was the last of the big television rights deals had been done. I think the decline of linear television, the decline of advertising revenues, cable cutting when it comes to subscription televisions. I saw this all as the theme that was going to make the business model change for traditional sports.

MARIO CHRISTODOULOU: Audience numbers were falling while fans were getting older. People were switching off from the footy.

Then in 2015 David had a light bulb moment.

He discovered that a single website run by a young esport enthusiast in Sydney was getting bigger audience numbers than some of the most high profile Australian sporting matches.

DAVID HARRIS: we get three or four million viewers for a State of Origin or Grand Final NRL, and that's the biggest TV event of the year. And somehow this young kid has actually matched that reach from his Sydney office. And I think it's where I realised that just the scale of this industry surpasses anything we're doing locally in interest in sports

MARIO CHRISTODOULOU: So, he packed in his job at the NRL, and set up this esports training centre at the Sydney Cricket Ground.

WEB ARCHIVE: It is time to send it down to the stage to kick off the 2017 World Championships.

MARIO CHRISTODOULOU: He also invested in a local team- The Dire Wolves.

The Dire Wolves became the first Australian team to compete in League of Legends on a world stage.

WEB ARCHIVE: One barren buff left running on the side of Dire Wolves, a triple for Marr?

MARIO CHRISTODOULOU: And just to give you some perspective, an estimated 50 million people watched just one international Dire Wolves match - the vast majority of them should be said, were from China.

The Australian esports market is still somewhat underdeveloped though..

In fact, recently one of the major video game publishers closed their Sydney esports office, saying the market here wasn't big enough to justify their local operation.

But David Harris says that's a minor speed bump -- he's playing the long game.

DAVID HARRIS: Average age of an NFL fan was forty seven. And it was almost one year older each year. It was an ageing population, ageing fan base. ///CUT/// [00:30:43] At the moment, part of the decline of traditional sports is having trouble connecting with that younger generation where esports, you've got that wave of young fans coming through who are staying with it.

MARIO CHRISTODOULOU: As more money is poured into the industry, more and more players are chasing the dream of making it to the big time.

I'm in Kellyville, a suburb in Sydney's north west, and it's probably about as suburban as suburbs come. Most houses have two cars in the driveway. Some have one on the lawn. And I guess in some ways, it's the last place you'd expect to find some of the most elite players in Australian gaming.

In this suburb is the home of The Chiefs and the elite pro-gaming team. These players are living out my 14-year-old self's dream. They're getting paid to play video games.These players are athletes and maybe in years to come we may be talking about them with the same reverence we do people like Alan Border or Cathy Freeman or Dawn Fraser - inside this house might just be the future of Australian sport.

Gaming houses like this have popped up all over the world. Living together allows professional gamers ..mostly boys... to live and breathe video games, and get paid to do it.

Hey ... not too bad....This is the chiefs?
Hey, hey.... I'm Mario..... how you going? Not too bad. Let's go and see the guys inside.

Inside the house is lightly furnished, it's mostly tidy, there's a few few dirty dishes in the sink, it's a little like a cross between a show home and a sharehouse

MEMBER OF THE CHIEFS: An Artisan Burger sounds pretty good

MARIO CHRISTODOULOU: one player is ordering his lunch.

Just behind him are these four high-performance computers and behind those are futuristic gaming-chairs, which look like they belong in a formula one car.

In between the computers there's a glass-doored fridge and it's fully stocked with cans of Red Bull, which is one of the team's main sponsors.

I'm met by team members Tom Henry and Hugh Anderson. Online they go by the name Apocdud and HughMungus. They offer me a tour of the house.

It's around 2 o'clock in the afternoon but the house is dark.

The curtains are drawn and most rooms are lit by overhead lights or these unnatural fluorescent advertising signs from their sponsors, hanging on the wall.

MARIO: Why are the curtains drawn and why don't you like light
TOM HENRY: slightly joking but also important thing is not having glare on the monitors because that can really affect just how much you can see if that's one thing. I mean, also just making sure the heat of the room isn't too high.

MARIO CHRISTODOULOU: Along the ground are coils of blue cords.

what's this tangle of blue cords in front of us?
MEMBER OF THE CHIEFS: Yeah, so these are ethernet Cables. They basically make sure that every room is connected to the internet

MARIO CHRISTODOULOU: Most of the players in this house are asleep. They've been up late playing games on North-American time, trying to get noticed by scouts in the States.

So even though it's 2pm now, it's in the middle of the night for them.

MARIO CHRISTODOULOU: So we can't go in this room because there's another Chiefs team who are sleeping at the moment because they've spent all night gaming on North American time.
MEMBER OF THE CHIEFS: Yes, there's another player in that. He's sleeping right now.
MARIO CHRISTODOULOU: OK, yeah. You have to kind of do you find that's not uncommon occurrence. You have to kind of tiptoe around people who might be on a different time zone.
MEMBER OF THE CHIEFS: Yeah, no, it's very it's very, very common.
MARIO CHRISTODOULOU: And is it sometimes you in the room sleeping during the day.
MEMBER OF THE CHIEFS: Yes, yes. Yes, for sure.

MARIO CHRISTODOULOU: We take a look at the bathroom.

MEMBER OF THE CHIEFS: it's obviously a shared bathroom

MARIO CHRISTODOULOU: The toilet seat's up and there's a clutch of toothbrushes sitting in a cup.

There's also a bunch of beauty products spread across the bench - from a major skincare brand - another of their sponsors.

These guys are walking advertisements...so sometimes the morning routines can take a while

MEMBER OF THE CHIEFS: you basically just have to be patient with each other. It's like if someone someone is using the bathroom, like the shower, you have to wait.

MARIO CHRISTODOULOU: Hugh Anderson or HughMungus sits down to do some training. He can spend as much as six hours in front of a monitor like this, training for the next match.

MARIO CHRISTODOULOU: How good are your reflexes?
HUGH ANDERSON: I'm quite, quite fast in this game.

MARIO CHRISTODOULOU: I sit down in one of the big chairs next to him. On the sleek gaming monitor in front of us are bots- non-human players he's using for target practice, their heads are lined up like tin cans on an old fence pailing.

Hugh- Mungus starts shooting.

MARIO CHRISTODOULOU: in the last second I've just watched you take out one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve - all head shots.
HUGH ANDERSON: So you can do reaction time tests basically 180 milliseconds after you see something you click.
MARIO CHRISTODOULOU: So you can react to something just over a tenth of a second after it happens.
HUGH ANDERSON: Yeah. Essentially, yeah.
MARIO CHRISTODOULOU: That's crazy.
HUGH ANDERSON: Yeah, it is... it is a skill that you acquire over a lot of time playing.

MARIO CHRISTODOULOU: I challenge Hugh-Mungus to a game...

Ahhh..Jeez....Where were you? Behind me, behind it.

Hugh silently stalks me from the other side of the map. Death is swift...

MARIO CHRISTODOULOU: Damn.
HUGH ANDERSON: I kind of feel bad now

MARIO CHRISTODOULOU: Hugh is just toying with me, but there is a brief moment where I manage to sneak up behind him and get a shot off, taking out Hugh from behind.

HUGH ANDERSON: Oh I didn't even see I didn't see it.
MEMBER OF THE CHIEFS: Mate you're out.
HUGH ANDERSON: You're in you're in Mario. We'll send through the contract Mario.

MARIO CHRISTODOULOU: With just an ounce of dignity left, I decide to quit while I'm ahead.

So please tell me that was a genuine kill. Just going to finish on a high.

The Chiefs are a successful, well managed team.

This is the vision of esports the industry likes to promote.

These players earn a salary, they have the best computer equipment and even a marketing team pushing their brand - and their merchandise - to the world.

But most aspiring esport athletes never set foot in a gaming house. They never receive this level of support. They will never reach these heights, and so.. they have got less to lose if they break the rules.

MARIO CHRISTODOULOU: Hey, can you hear me?
JHD: Yeah. I can hear you.

MARIO CHRISTODOULOU: This is Joshua Hough-devine, a 19-year-old lower ranked semi professional player.

Online, Josh is known by his gamer tag JHD. He's been playing video games since he was around thirteen.

And he reckons he's not half bad.

JHD: I'm competitive. I always want to win, even if it's against, like, the best team in the world I'll just try and win

MARIO CHRISTODOULOU: In his profile photo, he's got a round, innocent looking face, with baby-smooth skin, and scraggly dark hair escaping from a baseball cap.

He used to work in a restaurant during the day, and play games at night.

But since COVID hit, he's been on Jobseeker, playing Counter Strike and other games full time.

Two months ago he was playing in this match it's a qualifier for an Australian Counter Strike tournament.

JHD: JHD, gonna deny it, that's a good opening pick from Rooster 2.

MARIO CHRISTODOULOU: His team is called Rooster 2.

During the game Josh moves around the map like lightning.

WEB ARCHIVE: 20 and 154 for JHD

MARIO CHRISTODOULOU: It isn't enough

WEB ARCHIVE: Very smart from old Man JHD

MARIO CHRISTODOULOU: He's one of the last players standing

JHD: It is just JHD and JTR, it's looking to be... well a one sided affair to be honest

MARIO CHRISTODOULOU: He's just not fast enough and he's gunned down.

After around 90 minutes Rooster 2 loses the game.

Josh has lost more than just the match... because on matches like this one... Josh has made some big mistakes...

Mistakes that would get him into big trouble.

A month later... he's online, as usual, chatting with his friends, when one of them gets a message.

JHD: Someone just from the team sent a link it and we were like what the fuck just happened.

MARIO CHRISTODOULOU: A ruling esport body - the Esports Integrity Commission - has accused Josh and some of his mates of serious corruption offences.

Josh and some of his teammates have been banned from playing professional Counter Strike for twelve months.

He couldn't believe what he was reading.

And he was so shocked, he laughed.

JHD: I don't know, I laugh at situations I'm not really supposed to laugh at. So I was just laughing a bit. Like, what can I do at this point Like, I just laughed it off. I know it was just a shock

MARIO CHRISTODOULOU: At that moment his mates from a higher ranked team, were just about to start a major tournament

JHD: They basically got forfeited from that tournament because they found out like 10 minutes before the game started that two of their players had been banned.

MARIO CHRISTODOULOU: So what did Josh do wrong?

Well, he doesn't lack confidence, and before some matches around this time, he'd laid a bet on himself.

MARIO CHRISTODOULOU: Did you actually do what they were accusing you of? Did you bet on one of your own matches?
JHD: Yeah. But on my own, match to win. That's what I did.

He saw it as a kind of self motivation...And so did some of his mates.

JHD: If I bet on myself to win or not, I'm going to try 100 percent to win that game.
MARIO CHRISTODOULOU: Did you ever bet on yourself to lose?
JHD: No, I would never do that, because when you do that sort of stuff, it's just... it's basically just stealing money like it's a scummy thing to do. It's just not what I do. I've got morals. I'm not a criminal.

MARIO CHRISTODOULOU: Josh says when he laid these bets, he didn't even try to cover his tracks. He made the bets in his own name. Which he says is evidence that he didn't even know it was against the rules.

His name was logged by the betting company and a betting report was sent secretly to a body called the Esports Integrity Commission - E.S.I.C - ESIC.

ESIC is the closest thing the esport's industry has to a police force.

It's a private body which investigates match fixing and cheating across the world. They have the ability to ban players, and refer matters to police.

ESIC doesn't just get reports from gambling companies, it gets tip offs from all sorts of people, and they run their own investigations too.

Stephen Hanna is ESIC's global strategy director

And right now, he's showing me how to spot a cheater.

STEPHEN HANNA: What we're seeing on screen is an instance where cheating occurred at a tournament that was sanctioned by ESIC.

MARIO CHRISTODOULOU: I'm sitting in his modern white-walled office in Sydney's West.

Stephen swings the monitor around to show me a pre-recorded Counter-strike game.
STEPHEN HANNA: you can see right here the guns pointed at a blank wall.

MARIO CHRISTODOULOU: I'm seeing the game from a player's perspective.

Stephen tells me to Look closely at the crosshairs

STEPHEN HANNA: this enemy player is completely invisible and behind several walls and yet he just aimed directly, directly at the like at the head as well, which indicates that there is something fishy going on.
MARIO CHRISTODOULOU: One of the players is using a specific type of cheat called a wall hack.

STEPHEN HANNA: You are able to see through walls, essentially.

MARIO CHRISTODOULOU: These types of cheats can be purchased online.

And game developers are forever trying to catch the people who are using them.

Hanna says he receives complaints about cheating in professional games all the time.

If esports wants to be treated seriously, he says, it has to get on top of the match fixing and cheating.

STEPHEN HANNA: The sport is only as good as its ability to function as a sport, which is to have that competitive integrity. It's fundamentally built on the principle that there is competitive integrity. It's not just a bunch of rigged games that are being put on for show.

MARIO CHRISTODOULOU: But he says ESIC is under-funded and isn't keeping up with the complaints.

Stephen can only investigate a tiny fraction of the allegations he receives.

MARIO CHRISTODOULOU: it's 12 midday roughly at the moment. How many complaints or tip offs have you gotten so far today?
STEPHEN HANNA: So today we've received ninety eight reports like match fixing or fraud or cheating.
MARIO CHRISTODOULOU: Is that a typical day?
STEPHEN HANNA: Yeah, it's fairly typical. Definitely. bThere are a lot of a lot of tip-offs and a lot of reports that we receive that are not, you know, justifiable.
MARIO CHRISTODOULOU: So 98 just in the first half of today, I mean, that sounds like you're getting hundreds every single week.
STEPHEN HANNA: It is a huge workload. And we have sort of almost 16 match fixing investigations currently ongoing. If you look at something, another sport like cricket, you know, I mean, they probably have between four to six major match fixing investigations annually. We have 14. And that was basically picked up in the span of three months and they are all fairly major.
MARIO CHRISTODOULOU: Do you think ESIC has the resources to be across all the complaints that you get?
STEPHEN HANNA: No, that's the frank answer, no.
MARIO CHRISTODOULOU: What proportion of fixed matches do you think get exposed or stopped?
STEPHEN HANNA: Oh, a negligible proportion. To be frank.

MARIO CHRISTODOULOU: ESIC and Stephen have had a pretty busy year. During COVID-19 esports audience numbers have gone through the roof, increasing by around 50 per cent since March.

And according to Stephen, that's also led to a spike in match fixing and fraud.

STEPHEN HANNA: we've definitely seen an uptick in betting fraud. We've seen a very significant upturn in all sorts of match fixing activity, betting fraud-related activity in e sports. All in all, across all titles, there has been a very significant increase in match fixing.
MARIO: How big is the problem in Australia, do you think?
HANNA: Uhm...In Australia it's quite large.

MARIO CHRISTODOULOU: And he says they've been sending some of these cases to police

STEPHEN HANNA: I mean, the fact that we've already made referrals last year and are about to make referrals again two years in a row at a semi pro level is fairly concerning.

MARIO CHRISTODOULOU: The shadowy figures behind match fixing rarely, if ever, get caught. They hide behind anonymous social media profiles.

And they don't just target small-time players. Some have their sights set much, much higher.

WEB ARCHIVE: World's greatest number one mother.....team, ever created, it's Fnatic

MARIO CHRISTODOULOU: Fnatic advertises itself as one of the most successful esports brands of the last decade.

They've won more than 200 championships across 30 games, reaching a global audience of 55 million.

WEB ARCHIVE: We are Fnatic. It's time to seek out, level up and amplify,

MARIO CHRISTODOULOU: The team started out in Australia, but it's now headquartered in London.

And what fans of the team don't know, is just this year, Fnatic was approached by a match fixer and they were posing as an investor

I've seen evidence showing that this investor offered the team a sponsorship deal.

But there was a catch - the so-called deal required the team to deliver a particular win/loss result.

The team didn't pursue the deal - they did the right thing, and reported the incident.

The team told me in a statement it immediately reported what happened, and that no member of the Fnatic team was ever approached directly, or involved in conversations with the investor.

The team said it has a zero tolerance approach to any form of cheating, which is spelled out in their player contracts.

Fnatic is one of the highest profile teams in the world, but more often than not these attempts at match fixing are aimed at lower tier matches.

Gamblers can bet on any professional or semi-professional games through betting agencies in Australia, and also v unregistered agencies across the world.

Josh says he's been approached too

JHD: I've been offered like two thousand dollars a match to throw, but I just don't take it because it's just not what I'm about. Like why would I take two grand. You have a possibility of me getting arrested. It's just not worth that much.
MARIO CHRISTODOULOU: How do they they just ask the question?
JHD: They just straight up say Do you want to throw for $2000 a game and I just go 'nah' and I just block them.

MARIO CHRISTODOULOU: Since he was banned, he's been accused online of cheating and match fixing. He's angry that his reputation's been tarnished.

His only defence to his actions - he didn't read the rules.

JHD: We didn't read the rules properly. It was our fault. And we bet that's about it.
MARIO CHRISTODOULOU: Do you think that that's a fair excuse, that you didn't read the rules properly?
JHD: It's probably not a rule, but we take full responsibility for not reading the rules properly. Like, there's not much else, so we just didn't read the rules.

MARIO CHRISTODOULOU: And if this is true - if he simply didn't read the rules, then that's a problem.

Because if the young players behind the sport don't understand the rules, and aren't aware of the consequences, they might be facing more than just a ban.

That's exactly what happened to a group of Melbourne esport players this year.

NEWS ARCHIVE: Six Australian people, their age range anywhere from 19-22 years old, are now facing jail time for being involved n a match fixing scandal, potentially facing up to ten years jail time

MARIO CHRISTODOULOU: These players all came from Melbourne's outer suburbs and played for Counter strike teams in the Australian league.

Police were investigating them for more than a year before arresting and later charging five of them..

Some of them came from known, but lower ranked sides. These guys are due to face court in March next year.

This is the first time criminal charges had been laid against esport athletes in Australia.

And the police unit responsible was Victoria Police's Sporting integrity intelligence unit.

It's headed by Detective Superintendent Steve White.

STEVE WHITE: the Victoria Police Sporting Integrity Intelligence Unit is unique, it's one of a kind. Certainly in Australia, there are no other units like it and it has a reputation internationally as being a leader in its field.

MARIO CHRISTODOULOU: But Superintendent White says they are still learning when it comes to esports.

He believes esports is potentially more vulnerable to corruption, and that's because there's no governing body out there teaching young players right from wrong.

STEVE WHITE: esports players, a younger demographic, more likely potentially to be easily corrupted by criminal entities, and it's compounded by a lack of professionalisation in esports in Australia, where there are no education standards.

MARIO CHRISTODOULOU: And in Australia, where prize money at lower tier events is negligible, there's an incentive for players to manipulate matches.

STEVE WHITE: So due to lack of education by leagues, tournaments, or the game publishers, uhm... players will be potentially unaware of the rules governing, betting on esports or even how to recognise the match fixing approach or how to report it. So that whole governing body issue is going to be an issue.

MARIO CHRISTODOULOU: We don't know how much money comes from cheating or match fixing, but we do know that the incentive is huge.

An estimated 13 billion dollars was bet on esports this year. Some of that money comes from registered betting agencies but much also comes from illegal websites.

And it's not just the Police - the Australian Government agency - Sporting Integrity Australia - also told us it's been frustrated by the complex structure of the esport industry.

Unlike most sports, the esports industry doesn't have a single governing body to set the rules and educate players

Cricket has Cricket Australia, AFL has the AFL commission, but esports... well, it's a patchwork.

We reached out to two prominent Australian gaming associations.

One, the Australian Esports League, conceded that the industry was fragmented, leaving individual players vulnerable.

Another, the Esports Games Association, told us the government should speak to video game publishers and tournament operators about integrity measures.

So we went to the game publishers.

We reached out to the two biggest names in esport Valve Games and Riot Entertainment.

Because they own the game rights and control how they're used in esports, they're the gatekeepers.

So the buck stops with them.

Neither responded to our questions.

Josh says he is going to try and fight his ban. He says he's been trying to contact ESIC and find out how he can appeal.

JHD: I'm going to try and keep emailing them off track to email them. And they responded once and then they haven't responded since. When asked how to appeal and I've DMd a couple of their members and no response on Twitter yet, sir. I'm just going to wait it out.

MARIO CHRISTODOULOU: ESIC told us it's been in touch with Josh and let him know about his appeal options.

Josh has launched a tongue-in-cheek campaign aimed at overturning his ban.

In his typical trash-talking fashion, because his team is rooster 2, he's calling his campaign #freethecock.

During his ban he says he is committed to continuing his esport career, and he's going to spend his time off practicing and getting in shape.

JHD: I'm going to get jacked at the gym and then I'm just going to get better at CS and when I get unbanned I'll just .... I'll probably be the best player in Australia. I'm not going to lie. You can quote me on that one.

CREDITS:

Background Briefing's Sound Producers are Leila Shunnar and Ingrid Wagner.
Sound engineering by Marty Peralta
Fact-checking by Connie Agius and Benjamin Sveen
Supervising Producer is Tim Roxburgh
Our Executive Producer is Alice Brennan
And I'm Mario Christodoulou
You can subscribe to background briefing wherever you get your podcasts
Thanks for listening!