Interactive
ESPORTS 1ACCOUNT AGE VERIFICATION
Esports: opportunity to enter mainstream consciousness
Ben Keirle discusses pertinent issues surrounding age verification, the technology involved and the need for all industries to come together and operate cross-vertically for the benefit of everyone.
Ben Keirle, CEO, 1account Age Verification
British-born Ben Keirle is CEO of 1account Age Verification, based in London. Ben has a wealth of experience, heading up a number of global tech firms, specialising in mobile network operator payments, data & advertising. In his spare time, he's also an avid horse-racing fan.
Esports is one of the fastest- growing entertainment sectors in the world today and it’s growing even faster during the coronavirus lockdown. Many live video-gaming events have been cancelled during the crisis, but esports has an ability to shift seamlessly online where a captive, sport-starved audience awaits.
Despite missing its live audience, March’s Intel Extreme Masters (IEM) Katowice event set records, with more than one million viewing the final online.
This is the betting industry’s opportunity to fight underage gambling and show that our KYC protocols are up to the job. To this end, it’s crucial that businesses can validate customer KYC data accurately and at scale.
P92 NEWSWIRE / INTERACTIVE / MARKET DATA
On March 15, games platform Steam recorded an all-time record for concurrent users, with 20 million online and 6.2 million in-game. Meanwhile, Twitch downloads are going through the roof.
Amid all the challenges and uncertainty of the coronavirus crisis, this is esport’s moment to insert itself into mainstream consciousness. It’s time, too, for a stricken betting industry to maximise the sector’s potential during this sporting drought.
Times of uncertainty can also be a time for new opportunities and for the betting industry to prove it can adapt and provide new solutions to new demographics.
Esports is more than just gaming, it’s a subculture, with its own language, heroes and villains. In that sense, it is comparable to online poker in that operators need to build teams that are immersed in the culture of esports so they fully understand the needs of their audience.
Tis includes building new kinds of betting options and streaming services into your platform while exploring new solutions that appeal to a tech-savvy generation that grew up online.
But we also need to proceed with caution. For an industry that is facing increasing regulatory pressures from governments, embracing a pastime whose players and consumers are in many cases under 18 is problematic for obvious reasons.
So, will the aim of the industry be to drag esports betting kicking and screaming into the regulated sector?
Esports betting has been tainted by match-fixing and the “skin gambling” market, which was worth an estimated $5 billion in 2015, before Valve Corp, developer of Counter Strike: Global Offensive (CS: GO), moved to shut it down.
Skins are virtual designer weapons available in CS: GO with varying degrees of rarity, making some highly desirable to players. Interested in developing an in-game economy, Valve allowed skins to be traded on its Steam gaming platform.
But it was also possible to transfer skins to third- party websites, which helped these in-game items gain real-world value, facilitating the skin gambling industry that flew under the noses of regulators for many years. Esports betting was a huge focus of skin gambling, allowing internet users to place bets with no age verification checks whatsoever.
Tis is the betting industry’s opportunity to fight underage gambling and show that our KYC protocols are up to the job. To this end, it’s crucial that businesses can validate customer KYC data accurately and at scale.
A big age-verification challenge that operators may encounter is that a large portion of esports
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