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As eSports become more popular, time for the industry to get real about security

Published

5 years ago

July 26, 2021

Police in Ukraine recently seized 3,800 PlayStation 4 consoles, which currently retail for around 290 each, and found to their surprise that the operation wasn’t mining cryptocurrency as they assumed but was in fact being used to generate content packs for FIFA Ultimate Team, a popular game mode in the FIFA football series.

The raid and its results underline a fact that may escape more traditionally minded members of the gaming community: eSports is a major industry, and like any industry it is susceptible to fraud. The fact that the games themselves take place virtually is irrelevant to fraudsters who can use the familiar toolkit of multi-accounting, bonus abuse and affiliate fraud to earn thousands.

With many sports teams unable to play throughout much of 2020 and 2021, eSports grew massively. League Championship Series (LCS), one of the largest eSports leagues, became the third most viewed professional sports league amongst 18-34 year olds in the U.S and has retained its corporate sponsors at a time when other leagues were shut down. Success stories like these are blunted by how pervasive eSports fraud is,

So, what kinds of fraud are taking place in eSports, what is it costing eSports organizations and what can be done to stop it?

What kinds of fraud are possible in eSports?

eSports attracts very similar types of fraud to regular sports betting, including:

Bonus Abuse: Like other sports betting companies, eSports companies often give sign-up bonuses such as free bets to new players. By coding automated systems, a fraudster can sign up to hundreds of accounts and use the free bets to win real money. This can cost gaming companies up to 15% of their revenue.
Multi-accounting: Similarly, a fraudster can use multiple accounts to perform other types of fraud, such as matched betting, ‘smurfing’ or arbitrage of affiliate fraud.
Affiliate Fraud: Those eSports betting organizations that draw in some of their new players from affiliates are vulnerable to affiliate fraud in which an affiliate creates fake accounts to gain the pay-out.
Account takeover: Using lists of passwords from data breaches, keyloggers or phishing a fraudster can gain access to a player’s account and drain their funds.
Chargeback fraud: A player, who may be a legitimate gamer and not a professional fraudster, initiates a chargeback on a transaction. This is common in gaming when gamblers regret a bad bet and claim that their account was hacked.

The costs of eSports fraud

Fraud costs have a way of snowballing, with each $1 lost through fraud actually costing companies $3. The above techniques are hardly equivalent to the major data breaches of major banking and tech companies that cost on average $3.86 million, but the constant barrage of low-level frauds can soon drain your company’s security budget. Aside from the cost of the fraud itself, there are a number of hidden costs such as:

Chargeback losses: Investigating and disputing chargebacks will take up your risk team’s time, leaving them little time for more valuable activities. More worryingly, a company with a large number of chargebacks is likely to find it difficult securing credit or loans. Visa and Mastercard’s resolution processes are making things even more difficult for merchants, so you are likely to lose even more.
Affiliate budget waste: You could be paying for useless clicks from bot networks rather than legitimate customers, wasting your marketing budget and reducing overall ROI.
Reputational damage: Once word of mouth spreads about customers losing the entire bank accounts to account takeovers it will not be long until players start deserting your site.
Regulatory fines: The regulations around eSports are not as stringent as with other sports betting, but it will not be long before they catch up. With the industry growing it will not be long before countries put regulations in place to protect players, and without stringent security your company could be fined.

The solutions

You will notice that the majority of the types of fraud common in eSports have to do with fake accounts. These are easy for fraudsters to create using the wealth of publicly available data and leaked information, but fortunately artificial intelligence-based tools have been developed that allow companies to spot synthetic identities.

Through device fingerprinting, email profiling and IP analysis a complete picture of a new signup to your site can be created, allowing software to spot the tell-tale signs of a hastily created account. For example, it could find that an email address does not match any social accounts, or that they use VPNs and data centers to conceal their IP address.

Of course, a sophisticated fraudster could create a convincing fake identity, especially with the wealth of information available from data dumps, so modern technology can also spot the use of pre-paid credit cards or even the speed with which information is entered, which could indicate it is being filled in automatically by a script.

By combining data points from a large and ever-growing set a system can determine whether it is likely that any given new account is fraudulent. For the many cases in which it will not be fully clear whether an account is authentic or not adaptive Know Your Customer checks can be used – customers with several red flags will be given full tests to determine their identity whereas other customers will have less obtrusive tests for a smoother site experience.

eSports has gone from a niche concern to an Olympic sport in a few short years, and that success is going to attract fraud, so it is vital for the industry to pre-emptively defend against fraud by adopting the very highest levels of security.

To learn more, visit: https://seon.io/

Related Topics:eSports latest-news PlayStation 4

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Tonybet player in Canada claims $20,000 CAD golden World Cup card prize

Published

8 hours ago

July 21, 2026

Wladimir P.

tonybet-player-in-canada-claims-$20,000-cad-golden-world-cup-card-prize

Tonybet says a player in Laurier-Station, Canada has claimed the “golden card” prize worth $20,000 CAD in the operator’s World Cup Card Collection. The announcement was made Tuesday 21st July 2026.

The World Cup collection featured 51 cards in total, including 48 digital cards representing participating World Cup nations, plus three unique prize cards in bronze, silver and gold. Tonybet said the bronze card—available during the group stage—was previously found by a customer in Saint-Colomban, Canada, while the silver card—available during the knockout rounds up to the quarter-finals—was won by a player in County Kildare, Ireland.

The golden card became available for the semi-final, third-place play-off and final, and has now been claimed, Tonybet said.

Tonybet Head of Product Kiryl Liudvikevich said: “You can plan a campaign down to the last detail, but you can’t plan what the World Cup brings.

“We designed the collection to evolve with the tournament, and every knockout round created new stories we couldn’t have predicted. Seeing players complete their collections and discovering who would uncover each prize was the most rewarding part of the campaign.

“I hope everyone enjoyed the experience for what it was meant to be: a fun addition to the tournament, played responsibly and always within their limits.”

Tonybet said the collection will remain open until 31 July for players who are still completing sets and spending coins, although all grand prizes have been awarded.

The post Tonybet player in Canada claims $20,000 CAD golden World Cup card prize appeared first on EE Gaming | Global iGaming & Tech Intelligence Hub.

Canada

Tonybet player in Canada claims $20,000 CAD golden World Cup card prize

Published

8 hours ago

July 21, 2026

GamingAmericas.com

The golden card became available for the semi-final, third-place play-off and final, and has now been claimed, Tonybet said.

Tonybet Head of Product Kiryl Liudvikevich said: “You can plan a campaign down to the last detail, but you can’t plan what the World Cup brings.

“I hope everyone enjoyed the experience for what it was meant to be: a fun addition to the tournament, played responsibly and always within their limits.”

Tonybet said the collection will remain open until 31 July for players who are still completing sets and spending coins, although all grand prizes have been awarded.

The post Tonybet player in Canada claims $20,000 CAD golden World Cup card prize appeared first on Americas iGaming & Sports Betting News.

AI

SCCG Management and Trivver Partner to Transform Gaming with AI-Powered Interactive Commerce

Published

8 hours ago

July 21, 2026

GamingAmericas.com

sccg-management-and-trivver-partner-to-transform-gaming-with-ai-powered-interactive-commerce

SCCG Management has entered a strategic partnership with Trivver, Inc., a spatial AI technology company holding more than 165 global patents, to bring measurable AI-powered commerce experiences to gaming operators, casinos, sportsbooks, and entertainment brands.

SCCG Management, an advisory and consultancy firm serving publicly traded and privately held corporations across the global gaming, betting, and prediction markets sectors, today announced a new strategic partnership with Trivver, Inc., a spatial AI technology company based in Hideout, Utah. The partnership brings Trivver’s patented AI-powered Smart Objects into SCCG’s network of gaming operators, platform providers, and sports and entertainment brands.

Trivver holds more than 165 global patents covering spatial AI, immersive environment monetization, and viewability measurement, with technology that deploys across web, mobile, and smart glasses platforms without requiring an app download. Trivver enables gaming operators and brands to transform digital environments into measurable, interactive commerce experiences where every product, sponsorship, or promotion becomes intelligent, personalized, and directly shoppable. The company’s work includes a virtual banking experience built for JPMorgan Chase and, most recently, the June 11, 2026 launch of its PlayCanvas SDK on Google Cloud Marketplace, Trivver’s first commercial deployment of in-game advertising infrastructure, announced with supporting statements from Jack Buser, global director for Games, Strategic Industries at Google Cloud, and Will Eastcott, CEO and co-founder of PlayCanvas. The SDK lets developers building on the PlayCanvas engine deploy interactive in-world brand experiences inside browser-based games, personalized in real time using Google’s Gemini models, with Unreal Engine and Unity support in development. Its platform is designed to turn any product, brand asset, or advertising unit into an interactive 3D object inside an immersive environment, with built-in measurement of viewability and engagement aligned with IAB and MRC ad-measurement standards.

Trivver’s environments can be launched through a URL, QR code, or link, with inventory swapped in seconds without changing the destination address, and each smart object carries its own engagement data on screen coverage and dwell time. That data layer is what SCCG sees as the differentiator for gaming and entertainment use cases: an operator or rights holder can measure exactly how an audience engages with a branded 3D object inside a live casino stream, a fan-engagement environment, or a venue activation, not just whether it was displayed.

Under the partnership, SCCG will provide Trivver with strategic and regulatory advisory across gaming verticals, commercial introductions to operators and platform partners across its network, support for Trivver’s expansion into new international markets, and introductions to potential strategic partners and acquirers. The engagement will prioritize verticals where Trivver’s technology has direct application, including live casino, fan engagement and sports entertainment, music, and automotive. The fit runs in both directions: Trivver’s own positioning for its Enterprise AI Commerce Platform names Gaming, Casinos & Sports Betting as one of ten target verticals the platform serves.

“Trivver is exactly the kind of category-defining technology partner our network looks for. They hold more than 165 global patents, they just launched their PlayCanvas SDK on Google Cloud Marketplace, and their own platform already names gaming, casinos, and sports betting as a core vertical. Live casino, fan engagement, and immersive entertainment all have unused digital real estate, and Trivver’s spatial AI is built to monetize exactly that space, with measurement built to IAB and MRC standards.”

Stephen Crystal, Founder and CEO, SCCG Management

SCCG will draw on its established network of more than 100 partners across sportsbook operators, iGaming platforms, content studios, live casino providers, and B2B technology vendors to identify and support introductions for Trivver, alongside representation at major international gaming events including G2E Las Vegas, ICE London, and SBC events.

“Gaming has become one of the world’s largest digital commerce platforms. Together with SCCG we’re giving operators, brands, and entertainment companies a new way to engage audiences through AI-powered experiences that can be measured, personalized, and monetized in real time.”

Joel LaMontagne, Chief Executive Officer, Trivver, Inc.

The partnership adds to SCCG’s growing roster of technology partners bringing new categories of immersive, measurable digital experiences into the gaming and entertainment industry, and reflects the continued convergence of physical and digital engagement across live casino, sports, music, and automotive audiences. SCCG will begin with a market assessment and gaming-vertical analysis of Trivver’s technology, followed by initial introductions to qualified operators and platform providers across its network, with distribution and advisory support continuing throughout the engagement.

About SCCG Management

SCCG Management is a global advisory firm with more than 33 years of experience connecting clients to strategic partners across the gambling industry. With an ecosystem of over 130 gaming-related partner companies, SCCG provides market representation, business development, capital introductions, and managed services to operators, technology providers, and brands worldwide. For more information, visit sccgmanagement.com.

About Trivver

Trivver, Inc. is a spatial AI technology company specializing in 3D smart object technology, immersive environment monetization, and augmented reality deployment across web, mobile, and smart glasses platforms. Trivver is the Enterprise AI Commerce Platform that enables organizations to create, deploy, measure, personalize, and monetize interactive experiences across web, mobile, gaming, smart TVs, and emerging wearable devices. The company holds more than 165 global patents, launched its PlayCanvas SDK on Google Cloud Marketplace in June 2026, and has worked with organizations including JPMorgan Chase. Trivver is led by Chief Executive Officer Joel LaMontagne. For more information, visit trivver.com.

The post SCCG Management and Trivver Partner to Transform Gaming with AI-Powered Interactive Commerce appeared first on Americas iGaming & Sports Betting News.