Are casinos grooming teen gamers into gamblers?
Amid fears over children as young as ELEVEN lured into addiction, firms face alarming claim...
CASINOS and betting firms have been accused by experts of grooming teenage video gamers as the next generation of gamblers.
The Mail on Sunday can reveal t hat FTSE 250 company Rank Group, which owns Grosvenor Casinos and Mecca Bingo, has hosted a series of so-called eSports video gaming tournaments where parti ci pants cl ai med t o have gambled as they took part.
Computer gamers as young as 18 were invited to casinos across the country to play Counter- Strike: Global Offensive – a video game in which participants shoot at each other and plant bombs.
It is understood that the prize money for the tournaments was deliberately kept to a low total of £10,000 to attract local players – most of whom were in their late teens, 20s or 30s – as opposed to professional eSports players.
Friends of the gamers could track scores on popular Counter-Strike website HLTV.org, which also runs odds on the matches alongside hosting adverts for gambling firms.
The tournament culminated at the Grosvenor Casino in Coventry on November 25, where gambling in the casino by the eSports teams appears to have been rife.
Posts on Twitter reveal that members of the London Esports team, the eventual winners of the tournament, bet in the casino. The team’s coach said he had lost £150 in half an hour on the eve of the tournament. From the posts, it appears some of the group played roulette.
Grosvenor Casinos has also hosted viewing parties for major international eSports tournaments.
Betting firms are increasingly sponsoring eSports. Betway, a company based in Malta which has a large online presence in the UK, sponsors Ninjas in Pyjamas, one of the best- known Counter- Strike teams, and the professional tournaments ESL One and Intel Extreme Masters.
It also runs a comprehensive betting book for competitive video gaming – and even offered odds on the Grosvenor tournament final.
The Mail on Sunday found that a number of followers of the Betway eSports Twitter account stated that they were under the age of 18. The firm is investigating.
The findings come amid controversy about the links between gambling firms, sport and young people becoming betting addicts.
Last month, a study by the Gambling Commission found there are 430,000 problem gamblers in the UK of whom 55,000 are aged 11 to 16. The number has quadrupled in two years. Some 450,000 children – one in seven of the 11-16 age group – are thought to gamble regularly.
Following an outcry, Britain’s biggest gambling firms have agreed to a ban on advertising on TV during sports matches. Meanwhile, eSports has become big business, with some players and teams turning professional. It is now an industry worth almost $1 billion, with professional teams competing for prize pools worth up to $25 million at tournaments across the world.
Marc Etches, chief executive of the GambleAware charity, said he fears that the links between eSports and betting firms will ‘normalise’ gambling among young people.
He added: ‘Policymakers need to keep up with what is happening out there and think about stronger protections for our young people.
‘Gambling is pushed at children – through sport, advertising or online through social media.
‘Now gambling-like activity that is increasingly apparent in video games is another concern. I think we should be very concerned about what impact eSports may have.’
Ian Smith, head of the eSports industry’s Integrity Commission, which tackles fraud and match-fixi ng, s a ys Counter- St r i ke has ‘groomed a generation of gamblers’ by using so-called ‘skins’ betting.
This is where gamers use weapons – or skins – that they have acquired digitally from video games a s a form of vi r t ual currency. These can then be gambled unofficially for a chance of winning a rarer skin and often are sold and turn into real money.
We should be very concerned about what impact eSports may have
They are thinking about how you get young people in to play roulette
‘A huge number of underage people learned how to bet and gamble this way,’ said Smith. ‘There has then been a shift from skins betting to normal cash and currency betting.’ He added: ‘With casinos, there is a huge attraction with eSports events. They are thinking about how you get young people to come through your floor and maybe play a bit of blackjack and roulette.’
A spokesman for Grosvenor Casinos said it ensured those at its eSports tournaments were over 18. He added: ‘The tournament was part of a trial to understand if this type of event was something customers would enjoy. The players who took part were not asked to join the casino. We also did not take any bets on the tournament.’
On under-18s accessing its Twitter feed, a spokesman for Betway said: ‘Since becoming aware of this issue, we have implemented an age-gate and are now working to identify and remove any individuals under the age of 18.
‘We take this breach of [our own] policy extremely seriously, for which we apologise, and have initiated a full investigation.’
A spokesman for Valve, publisher of Counter-Strike, said it ‘doesn’t participate in skins gambling sites’ and believes the practice is declining.