Latest News

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

Up Next

SOFTSWISS Signs Content Agreement with Blueprint Gaming

Don't Miss

Salsa flying high after Pipa Games deal

Boomerang Partners

Overtime begins: Boomerang Partners launches the final stage of the Golden Boomerang Awards 2026

Published

2 hours ago

July 23, 2026

Wladimir P.

overtime-begins:-boomerang-partners-launches-the-final-stage-of-the-golden-boomerang-awards-2026

The Golden Boomerang Awards 2026 by Boomerang Partners is moving into its decisive phase. The third and final stage of the tournament – titled “Overtime” – will run from 20 July to 31 August. It marks the last opportunity for participants to reshape the leaderboard and compete for the season’s main prize – an exclusive private dinner with a football legend in September 2026.

Overtime mechanics: points allocation

To intensify competition during the final stretch, Boomerang Partners is introducing an updated scoring system. From now on, affiliate teams will earn 3 points for every FTD generated on any partner brand from the Agency’s clients’ portfolio. In the previous stage, participants received 3 points for each sports FTD and 1 point for each online casino FTD. Now, the value of all FTDs is identical.

Overtime mechanics: performance boosts

Within the Overtime stage of the Golden Boomerang Awards 2026, a set of performance boosts remains active. These mechanics give participating teams the opportunity not only to catch up but also to overtake the leaders.

Welcome Boost – x2 points for the first 14 days after entering the stage
Lucky Five – +5 points for achieving 10 Casino FTDs per week
Last Minutes Winner – x3 points during the final 7 days of Overtime

Martin Černý, CEO at Boomerang Partners said: “Overtime brings the Golden Boomerang Awards 2026 to its most competitive stage. At this point in the tournament, every result can influence the leaderboard, and teams still have the opportunity to improve their positions. We expect the final weeks to bring strong competition and determine the final standings.”

A final stretch where every day counts

With fewer than 40 days left in the GBA 2026, the competition enters its most volatile phase. The leaderboard remains open, and even small performance shifts can significantly alter final standings. Participants are now entering a stage where strategy, timing, and consistent activity define the outcome – and where the final push may determine the season’s ultimate winner.

Overtime has begun. TIME TO WIN THE TITLE.

About Boomerang

Boomerang Partners is a rapidly growing global marketing agency offering a wide range of services. In 2024, it launched the inaugural Golden Boomerang Awards – a global tournament for affiliate teams. More than 400 affiliate teams participated in the second season of the tournament in 2025. Martin Černý – Boomerang Partners’ CEO since June 2025.

The Agency’s clients’ portfolio contains brands offering affiliate and entertainment services across multiple markets in compliance with local regulations. These products provide incentive programs and 24/7 multilingual support.

The post Overtime begins: Boomerang Partners launches the final stage of the Golden Boomerang Awards 2026 appeared first on EE Gaming | Global iGaming & Tech Intelligence Hub.

GR8_TECH

The World Cup Is Over. GR8_TECH Opens “The Locker Room” to Count What It Was Worth

Published

2 hours ago

July 23, 2026

Wladimir P.

the-world-cup-is-over.-gr8-tech-opens-“the-locker-room”-to-count-what-it-was-worth

The trophy has been lifted. Now comes the most interesting part for operators: counting the revenue, assessing what worked, learning from what didn’t, and deciding what to change before the next betting event.

On Thursday, August 20, at 4:00 p.m. CEST, GR8_TECH will host “The Locker Room: World Cup Numbers”, a closed-door benchmarking session created to help operators make sense of their tournament results and see how their performance stacked up against the room and the wider market.

Led by Dinos Doxiadis, Head of Sportsbook Business at GR8_TECH, the session will combine anonymized benchmarks with in-depth post-World Cup platform data on margin, player behavior, retention, and peak-load performance. It isn’t a tournament recap, but a working session built around deeper analysis than GR8_TECH releases publicly.

A First Look at the World Cup Numbers

Initial aggregated data from the GR8_TECH platform shows an average tournament margin of over 12%, alongside a significant increase in staking during the knockout stages.

Average stakes during the play-offs were 53% higher than during the group stage, while the average stake on the final was 89% above the tournament average.

Player interest was highly concentrated. Matches featuring Spain, Argentina, England, or France generated 42% of the total World Cup turnover. Argentina was the tournament’s most-bet-on team, accounting for 12.5% of all bets, although Spain finished only 0.09 percentage points behind Argentina by turnover.

The final also created one of the tournament’s most demanding operational moments. Within one minute of the final whistle, GR8_TECH’s platform settled more than half a million bets, demonstrating the level of processing performance required when a global audience reaches the same outcome simultaneously.

Inside The Locker Room, participants will examine what happened across:

Live betting and bet builders
Margin and staking dynamics
Peak-load and settlement moments
Acquisition compared with player reactivation
Retention beyond the final whistle
Unexpected geographic performance
Operational, product, and campaign failures
Priorities for the next major event

“The World Cup generates a huge amount of data, but the value comes from understanding what sits behind it,” said Dinos Doxiadis, Head of Sportsbook Business at GR8_TECH. “This session is about identifying the patterns operators might miss in their own reporting, challenging assumptions, and turning one month of World Cup activity into better decisions for future events.”

See How Your World Cup Stacked Up

Leave the session with anonymized benchmarks, exclusive GR8_TECH platform insights, and a clear view of where your World Cup performance led—or lagged—the market.

Turn the lessons into your next strategy. Join The Locker Room: World Cup Numbers on Thursday, August 20, at 4:00 p.m. CEST.

GR8_TECH. Platform for Champions

GR8_TECH is an award-winning provider, delivering high-performance sportsbook and iGaming solutions that empower operators to lead and win in competitive markets. GR8_TECH’s comprehensive portfolio includes the GREAT_TURNKEY and GREAT_CRYPTO TURNKEY solutions, GREAT_SPORTSBOOK, and GREAT_CASINO AGGREGATION.

With a geo-specific approach to solutions, a focus on practical innovations, and an operator-first mindset, GR8_TECH helps its clients achieve measurable results in their target markets quickly and efficiently. Trusted by top operators worldwide, GR8_TECH has over 100 successful cases and earned multiple recognitions, including the title of Platform Provider of the Year by SBC Awards 2025.

The post The World Cup Is Over. GR8_TECH Opens “The Locker Room” to Count What It Was Worth appeared first on EE Gaming | Global iGaming & Tech Intelligence Hub.

ELA Games

ELA Games launches Age of Cleopatra slot with Hold & Win bonus

Published

2 hours ago

July 23, 2026

Wladimir P.

ela-games-launches-age-of-cleopatra-slot-with-hold-&-win-bonus

ELA Games has released a new slot, Age of Cleopatra, adding another ancient-Egypt theme title to its portfolio. The studio positions the game as a medium-volatility release and says it is available to demo now.

Age of Cleopatra runs on a 5×3 reel set-up with 25 paylines. ELA Games lists RTP at 93.75% / 95.73%, with Buy Bonus RTP at 93.8% / 95.9%. The maximum win is x5000, according to the company.

In the base game, a Collect Symbol gathers coin prizes visible on the screen, while “colored coins” charge pyramids that can unlock additional value, ELA Games said. The slot’s Hold & Win Bonus Game awards three respins by default (or four in an “Extra Respin” version), with modifiers tied to collected coins.

Features named by the studio include Multipliers, Extra Respins, and an Expand Grid mechanic that increases the layout from 3×5 to 5×5. ELA Games also states that multiple features can trigger at the same time.

“You can’t do justice to a legendary theme with just background art. Building a world around Cleopatra meant it had to feel truly authentic, a standard we apply to all our releases. At ELA Games, we consistently look beyond the visuals to craft an original universe, keeping storytelling through the mechanics at the center of our titles.” Marharyta Yerina, Managing Director at ELA Games.

The post ELA Games launches Age of Cleopatra slot with Hold & Win bonus appeared first on EE Gaming | Global iGaming & Tech Intelligence Hub.