Esports have gradually gained recognition as a significant economic market worldwide.[1] The substantial economic growth has led to a steady rise in the population of gamers.[2] Furthermore, this growth has contributed to enabling professional esports players to sustain their livelihoods[3] through participation in esports competitions, securing sponsorship contracts with businesses,[4] and live streaming on online platform providers such as Twitch and YouTube.[5] Esports is now firmly established as a global commercial market.

With the economic expansion of the esports industry, professional players are confronted with a range of challenges, encompassing sexual abuse and harassment in online gaming as well as the prevalence of discriminatory language in online conversations.[6]

In this series of articles, the author will consider the necessity of safeguarding in esports and video games, similar to discussions prevalent within the sports society.[7] In this context, it is crucial to acknowledge that the esports ecosystem involves diverse stakeholders, encompassing video game developers/publishers (or video game companies), third party organisers (including esports federations as well as league and tournament organisers), online platform providers, sponsoring companies, and gamers and esports players.[8]

Across this series, the author examines how three categories of stakeholders — video game publishers, esports federations, and online platform providers — have responded to those challenges, and considers whether a more unified safeguarding framework is needed across the esports ecosystem.

However, it is important to note that this article will not cover safeguarding initiatives undertaken by major third-party organisers, such as ESL FACEIT Group, and by esports teams and organisations, such as Fnatic and Team Liquid.[9] These stakeholders fall outside the scope of this series.

This series of three articles is structured as follows:

• Part 1 (this article) defines ‘safeguarding’ in esports and video gaming and identifies three interconnected categories of harm: sexual abuse and harassment, cyberbullying, and physical and mental health problems; before mapping the key stakeholders in the esports ecosystem;
• Part 2 will examine the practical self-regulatory responses of video game publishers and esports federations, and assesses whether those initiatives adequately address the identified harms; and
• Part 3 will examine the safeguarding initiatives of online platform providers, with a focus on Twitch and YouTube, before setting out overarching recommendations for a more unified safeguarding framework across the esports ecosystem as a whole.

Welcome once more to the Sports Integrity Chapter of the LawInSport Annual Review 2025/26. 

The inventiveness of misfeasance in the world of sport never ceases to alarm and amaze, nor the lengths to which might be gone to, to achieve illicit success.  The Winter Olympics were awash with allegations that athletes[1] have injected their penises with hyaluronic acid to increase suit size so that ski jumpers might hang longer in flight, and the relatively genteel sport of curling is rocked with suggestions[2] that a Canadian curler can be seen on video replays to have touched his stone after the hog line a rule violation few could have contemplated.  There is no point in suggesting that we are surprised by these developments, even the hearts of the good can be turned to darker acts when glory is at stake.

Yet more so in the world of integrity in sport, and this review takes on once more the bigger cases, revisits some old friends, and tries to balance out the battle of the good against the occasional successes of the less than good.

• Old Friends Revisited: Bessebeg, Lopez and Blatter
• Match-Fixing in the U.S. - What Did You Expect?
• Football and Expert Evidence
• Corruption Cases Across Other Sports
• Publications of Note
• Cases of Redemption