Legal issues facing esports - edoping & broadcasting rights

ESports is a demonstration sport which showcases a set of gamers trying to accomplish tasks by playing computer games. It involves a set of players competing against each other for a prize. Not all games can be played in esports. There are just about 8 to 9 major games in the esports. To be an esports game, it must be multiplayer game and game makers are leveraging on this to market their products. Why is there so much money involved? Publishers own the rights so how does the player make money? They form into a team and the team wins the price money and split among one another. The players make money from their monetized social media accounts. In cases where there are multiple players, a team owner or sponsor rents a team house where all players lodge, train and live until a tournament ends. The team owner or leader or sponsor will provide the hardware needed to play the game. In cases where there is single player for games that require just one player, the player may be self-sponsored or endorsed by a football team for soccer games. Broadcasting rightsUnlike traditional sports where the broadcasting rights belong to a governing body or tournament organiser, in esports, broadcasting rights belong to the game publisher but adverts made during a livestream are solely that of the tournament organizer.

Since its a marketing opportunity, the publisher usually has no problem with this as people who view the games are potential customers to the publisher. Yet, the game organizer must admit that the publishing rights belong to the publisher. In cases where a single player chooses to publish a game he/she plays online, twitch or youtube for instance, it is not a problem with the publisher but money made from such games can be liable to royalty claims by the game publishers. What right does the tournament organizer have? The tournament organizer is a stake holder who has put lots of cash in place to make a particular game competition actualize, hence they make money from game streaming. They can not give exclusive rights to specific streamers. Only the publishers have the right to pick exclusive streamers.

Manipulations/E-Doping Hardware and Software manipulations are possible. People cheat too in the area of esports. It is easy to cheat in esports where gamers tend to see through wall by employing certain codes fondly called cheats. Who has the control? In the pre finals, the game equipment belong to the gamers as the game arena cannot accomodate all the players. In the finals, the finalists come together to the game arena and here, the game equipment is owned and controlled by the tournament organizer. Conventional Doping should be considered cheating. This is because gamers use alot of brain power and some players use drugs to help them focus while some use some drugs to help them stay active throughout the games. As time goes on, conventional doping should be properly looked at and to develop into a mainstream sports, antidoping should be a strong point.