Adam Fitch: Esports\u2019 conflicts of interest problem is unavoidable David Lee\/Riot GamesWhen you look up what \u2018conflict of interest\u2019 means in a dictionary, you\u2019ll find: \u201cA phenomenon in every industry but especially rife in esports, a conflict of interest is the result of greed and malpractice in business.\u201d OK, you won\u2019t find that, but it may as well be the case. It\u2019s technically a situation in which a person or organization has multiple, competing interests. A decision regarding one interest could affect another. It could be having ownership of an entity that conflicts with the activities of your employer. In the context of esports, most of the instances of conflicts of interest are indeed ownership. It could be a businessperson having financial interest in competing teams or a professional player competing for one organization while owning a stake in another. Simply put, there\u2019s a huge game of trust being played here \u2014 allowing these instances to exist means that you either believe in the integrity of the involved persons or you don\u2019t care about the potential for duplicity. Either are dangerous. In a closed system like with Riot Games\u2019 LCS \u2014 a North American league that\u2019s made up of 10 partner teams \u2014 it\u2019s interesting. It\u2019s in the interest of every stakeholder for the competition to succeed, they all have financial involvement. They\u2019re all effectively business partners, or subdivisions of the same company. We\u2019ve already seen instances of troublesome conflicts of interest in its short lifespan and the public, frankly, only sees a smidgeon of what happens behind-the-scenes. Deepening the issue, many of the players have competed alongside each other and are chums. The teams have dealt with each other for years. When you become good friends over the years, there\u2019s a good chance some elements of professionalism are left at the door when dealing with each other. Even in more open ecosystems like that of Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, though ESL and Flashpoint alike would love for it to be closed, conflicts of interest are everywhere. So much so that the game\u2019s developer, a company notorious for staying away from the official competitive side of the title, had to intervene. A major issue is that these practices trickle from the top down. You only have to look so far as to ESforce to understand how interconnected and self-serving business can be in esports. The Russian competitor has been a major player in the industry for years and controls organizations, a news publication, and a tournament operator. It used to be much worse, too. It\u2019s saddeningly easy to think of existing examples of conflicts of interest to this day. An article of its own would be warranted should I rattle off a list of them here so I won\u2019t, but I really want to get across just how prominent they are \u2014 so much so that the much of the industry at large has a blas\u00e9 attitude towards them. It\u2019s not whether shady dealings are happening, it\u2019s that there\u2019s the opportunity for them to take place that\u2019s the problem. If I own two teams, a tournament operator, and a betting site, just imagine what is possible there. If I own multiple team brands and a news publication, that\u2019s free publicity whenever I so desire! I can even write my own narratives that will go down in history as we look back at esports\u2019 humble beginnings in decades to come. The solution? That\u2019s a tough nut to crack. Esports doesn\u2019t have a universal governing body, a fact that\u2019s both good and bad depending on how you look at it, and thus people are effectively free to do as they wish. There\u2019s not a barrier to entry when it comes to many of the top titles. You can start your own news outlet on any given day. Want to host an event? Get the approval of the game\u2019s developer, set a decent prize purse, and teams will flock. Anybody can operate in esports. Read More: Danish esports organization North shuts down – Game developers and tournament operators have the power to stop teams from competing in select events, so that\u2019s one solution. That\u2019s not a one-size-fits-all remedy though. Frankly, as esports stands, we can\u2019t cleanse the industry of the majority of potential conflicts of this sort. Especially at the very top. What we, the communities that comprise the esports industry, can do is hold these people and entities to account. Speak about instances of conflicts of interest on Twitter, Reddit, and other public spaces. Educate your fellow fans, industry professionals, even those involved in the situation who may not be aware of where an issue stems. We don\u2019t have the power to stop these incestuous relationships from existing ourselves but conversation may just convince the powers that be to do something effective. Some conflicts of interests are solvable, some aren\u2019t, but all should be treated seriously in the name of integrity. We can\u2019t let businesspeople sweep these practices under the rug if we want esports to be fair. It is an industry predicated on competition, after all.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Adam Fitch: Esports\u2019 conflicts of interest problem is unavoidable David Lee\/Riot GamesWhen you look up what \u2018conflict of interest\u2019 means in a dictionary, you\u2019ll find: \u201cA phenomenon in every industry but especially rife in esports, a conflict of interest is the result of greed and malpractice in business.\u201d OK, you won\u2019t find that, but it […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-35452","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35452","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=35452"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35452\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35452"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35452"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35452"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}