Esports is the competitive playing of video games such as League of Legends, Fortnite and Fifa Football.
The audiences for the biggest titlesare now enormous.
Fortnite alone has around 78 million monthly players and professional tournaments draw in many millions of online spectators.
League of Legends World Championship attracted over 100 million viewers in 2019 with a peak of 44 million.
In comparison, the Wimbledon mens final 2019 peaked at around9 million viewers.
Its not just the size of the audience thats different, its also their age.
The average tennis spectator is 61, whereas esports spectators are onaverage 26.
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This explosive growth has been fuelled by online advertising, which almosttripled during lockdown.
Esports Counter Strike global event in Moscow, September 2019.
Roman Kosolapov
The danger is that younger people are being drawn to gamble on esports.
In 2019,17% of esports gamblerswere aged 18-24.
In general,more and moreUK 16-34-year-olds are gambling, and the average age of gamblersis decreasing.
The number of problem gamblers aged 11-16has also quadrupledto more than 50,000 in just two years.
We identified three particular concerns.
First, people following esport gambling accounts are very young.
We found that 17% of followers were under 16, and another 69% were aged 16-23.
In other words, 85% of esports betting-account followers are under 24.
This content doesnt look like a hard sell or an incitement to gamble.
Funny stuff is also highly shareable.
All of this activity breaches the code.
We need to act now to stop social-media advertising turning childrens gaming into gambling.
An awareness campaign for parents is also needed.
Last but not least, we also need a lot more research.
We have also taken further steps to prevent young people from seeing betting adverts.
BGC members will also have to frequently post responsible betting messages on their Twitter accounts.
