Last week, Riot Games announced they were opening esports betting sponsorship opportunities for their Tier 1 League of Legends and Valorant teams. In his statement, President of Publishing & Esports John Needham describes the decision as “investing in a sustainable ecosystem.” Much like how microtransactions fuel Riot’s free-to-play games, esports betting companies will prop up Riot’s free-to-watch tournaments.
In 2024, the global betting market for Riot’s competitive games was $10.7 billion. “But here’s the problem,” Needham writes: “70% of bets across all sports are placed in unregulated markets with bookmakers who aren’t licensed.” In other words, the problem is not that esports spectators exhibit signs of potential gambling addiction, but that Riot isn’t cashing in on it.
In 2018, the US Supreme Court declared the federal ban on sports betting unconstitutional, which led to 38 states legalizing sports betting. Since then sportsbook wagers have increased from $4.9 billion in 2017 to $121.1 billion in 2023, and alongside that there has been a significant increase in online searches for gambling addiction.
Riot claims to be greenlighting esports betting partnerships “responsibly” by implementing the following safeguards: vetting all potential partners; requiring teams to create Internal Integrity Programs that uphold Riot’s values; and keeping Riot-owned broadcast channels free of betting ads, leaving it up to teams to decide how they will incorporate esports betting sponsorship into their own programs. Should any (further) scandal arise, it seems Riot will be offloading responsibility onto teams.
Riot’s audience skews young—44% of esports bettors last year were between 18-27 years old. Riot vetting esports betting companies will encourage more young people to gamble, and Riot fails to mention how they will protect their impressionable audience from life-altering addiction.
As game developer Max Krieger pointed out on Bluesky, Riot’s announcement is also an indication of market failure. Just last January Riot laid off 530 employees, with games industry layoffs being so commonplace in the past three years the phenomenon has its own Wikipedia page. As AAA production costs inflate and live service models become unsustainable, the normalization of games-related gambling is yet another grim symptom of a suffering industry.
