League of Legends and Valorant developer Riot Games is reversing its longstanding rules on gambling sponsorships for its esports leagues, seemingly in a thinly veiled justification to bring in that sweet, sweet betting revenue.
Yesterday, an announcement from John Needham, esports lead across Riot’s entire competitive portfolio, made Riot’s position clear: “We’re opening betting sponsorships in esports.”
Sponsorships will be available for top-tier League of Legends and Valorant teams throughout the Americas and EMEA. Apparently, it’s something that Riot’s competitive partners have been asking for “for years,” but the dev has resisted until now.
Needham goes on to explain why Riot has changed its mind. The really important bit, however, is this: the global betting market for League of Legends and Valorant in 2024 was $10.7 billion, but Riot isn’t really getting any of it. Needham does note that the majority of all sports betting is unlicensed, but that doesn’t really change the fact that Riot clearly has its eye on a pretty large bag of money.
The good news is that while Riot might be getting into bed with the gambling industry, which is becoming ever more prevalent in pretty much every major sporting competition in a way that’s pretty sinister at best, it’s doing so “responsibly.”
Needham has a whole list of terms covering everything from the esports viewing experience to competitive integrity to vetting partners, all attempts to polish the hefty turd that Riot has just placed in front of its audience.
(Image credit: Riot Games)
The response from the game’s community has been swift and pretty unified. There are multiple reasons why players don’t really want gambling in their League of Legends or Valorant events, ranging from sports betting’s pervasiveness in traditional sports, concerns around the gambling addiction (and how little Riot seems to be addressing that aspect of this partnership in favor of focusing on the integrity of the competitions themselves), and the fact that the company doesn’t exactly have the best track record with gambling.
Not only has Riot done very little to ever properly address the $10 billion market it says has been swirling around its games for years, it’s also got its own murky past with gacha-based systems.
The past few years have seen an array of cosmetics make it into its games that can generally only be accessed by brute-forcing a significant amount of money through a luck-based system. Granted, you’d get a reward if you persevered beyond a certain threshold, but it’s an issue that Riot has wrestled with its community over several times in recent years.
Honestly, as a player over the past few years, it’s been a whole thing, but it’s well summarized by one of the responses to Needham’s esports betting post over on the game’s official subreddit: “Riot hasn’t handled gambling responsibly for nearly a decade now.”
