Led by Tencent Esports, four of China’s top franchised leagues, League of Legends Pro League (LPL), King Pro League (KPL), Peace Elite League (PEL), and CrossFire Pro League (CFPL), have signed “Tencent Esports Anti-Match-Fixing Convention,” as well as other nine Tencent’s esports competitions, including Call of Duty: Mobile Major, Clash Royale Pro League, and QQ Speed S League, among others.
The convention includes a “Blacklist Database” developed by Tencent Esports. Once players or staff are involved in match-fixing, they will not be able to attend all Tencent-related esports competitions.
It should be noted that the convention also mentioned an anti-doping process. It’s not clear how the process is being developed or what substances will be banned.
During the Tencent Esports Global Summit, Tencent first showcased an announcement video featuring five Tencent executives and shared their opinions of match-fixing. Mars Hou, GM of Tencent Esports; Bobby Jin, Co-CEO of TJ Sports; Abner Chen, publishing producer of CrossFire; and Leo Liao, Allan Zhang, president of PEL, KPL, respectively.
LPL
“Tournament organizers should take responsibility to prevent match-fixing and maintain a sustainable esports ecosystem,” Jin said. “LPL has improved to fix match-fixing issues in six areas, including prevention mechanism, management mechanism, technological means, optimizing communication, data collection, and education.”
PEL
“Equity and Fairness are the foundation and basis of esports and sports events,” Liao said. “We [PEL] have provided a general regulation to prevent match-fixing in the product, technology, management, and more perspectives. From the early game to the end game, we have many professional referees to supervise and verify the fairness of the match.”
KPL
“Match-fixing issues have a huge [negative] effect on the development of tournament and league,” Zhang said. “We [KPL] will systematically enhance the educational training before the competition. On the other hand, we will build a solid anti-match-fixing system by regulation, technological tools, and means.”
CFPL
“Match-fixing is a devastating issue for any esports and sports event,” Chen said. “Every esports team has to attend the annual verification and the management team training by CFPL league. We believe that the increasing business value of the league can only prevent match-fixing issues when the business value of the league is high, and every segment from the league shares more business value in the process.
Tencent Esports
“Tencent Esports show “Zero Tolerance” on match-fixing,” Hou said. “Tencent Esports will unite all Tencent internal competitions and leagues to build a ‘Blacklist database.’ No matter players or staff, if they match-fixed the game, they will not able to attend all Tencent-related competitions. We will set ourselves as an example to others, building a clean esports ecosystem,” those five executives concluded.
