ESIC bans seven CS:GO players for betting

The Esports Integrity Commission (ESIC) has been swinging the banhammer right and left on CS:GO players. Just last month, the organization banned 37 coaches for using the infamous spectator bug, and now it has banned seven CS:GO players for betting activities.

The ESIC finished its investigation into betting offenses that took place during the Australian ESEA’s Mountain Dew League (MDL). The commission found that seven players placed bets on these matches at some point. Some of these bets were for their own matches.

In addition, the ESIC identified “several associates of the Offending Parties [who] also participated in betting activities related to the matches being played by the Offending Parties.” According to the ESIC, this discovery warrants a deeper investigation into these betting activities. It cautioned that this further investigation could pile on additional punishments to the offending players, their teams, and these associates.

So far, the ESIC has banned the following MDL CS:GO players for 12 months:

• Stephen “sjanastasi” Anastasi (LAKERS) [now playing as “stvn”]
• Akram “akram” Smida (Rooster) [now playing as “ADK”]
• Daryl “Mayker” May (Ground Zero)
• Corey “netik” Browne (Rooster) [sometimes spelt “nettik”]
• Damian “JD/The Real Goat” Simonovic (Rooster 2)
• Carlos “Rackem” Jefferys (Rooster 2)
• Joshua “jhd” Hough-devine (Rooster 2)

Betting is bad, mkay?

Specifically, these betting activities violate Article 2.2 of the ESIC Anti-Corruption Code. You can read it in full from the ESIC’s joint statement on the matter. In the TL;DR version, however, the extent of it (in a whole bunch of legalese) is that players are not allowed to place or accept bets, and they are not allowed to “directly or indirectly” entice others to enter into a bet.

At this time, though, the ESIC has not determined if there were any match-fixing matters on top of the bets. This is part of their on-going investigation into the MDL bets overall.

ESIC has asked all non-ESIC member tournament organizers to also honor these CS:GO player bans.