Riot Games has announced that it will begin officially sanctioning sports-betting sponsorships for esports teams in its Tier 1 League of Legends and Valorant leagues. While the company states that it still won’t allow advertisements in its official broadcasts, teams themselves will be able to take money from sports-betting companies for advertising through their own channels.

In a blog post, President of Publishing and Esports John Needham writes that the move is designed to take advantage of the rapidly growing sports-betting industry and to make esports-related betting more regulated. Seemingly to address concerns and head off potential criticism, Needham explains that the company is authorizing sports-betting sponsorships under a “guardrails first” strategy.

These “guardrails,” Needham states, are essentially the rules by which any sponsorship must be executed. First, sports-betting companies need to be vetted and approved by Riot itself, although the company has not shared the criteria on which this vetting is done. Second, to ensure that sports-betting companies are on a level playing field, Riot is mandating that official partners all use GRID, the officially sanctioned data platform for League of Legends and Valorant. Third, esports teams must launch and maintain internal integrity programs to protect against violations of league rules due to the influence of sports betting. Fourth and last, Riot will use some of the revenue from these sponsorships to support its Tier 2 (lower division) esports leagues.

One of the biggest sources of anxiety and frustration around the explosion of sports betting in the United States has been the increasingly high frequency of sports-betting advertising, and Riot addresses this concern by promising to not have ads from these companies in “Riot-owned broadcast and social channels.” This also means that teams will not be allowed to have sports-betting ads on team member jerseys. The only place these ads will be able to run are on team-owned channels. As Needham explains, “It will be up to each team to craft how sports-betting-related content shows up on their channels within the guidelines of the sponsorship program, content platform ToS [terms of service], and local regulations.”

The company’s justification for authorizing sports-betting sponsorships appears to center on a desire to address underground, unofficial, or otherwise unauthorized betting networks and organizations. “Sports betting–and more specifically, esports betting–is a space that more fans choose to engage with every year,” Needham writes. “According to Sportradar, the total betting turnover globally involving just LoL Esports and VCT reached $10.7 billion in 2024. But here’s the problem: 70% of bets across all sports are placed in unregulated markets with bookmakers who aren’t licensed.”

As such, the company hopes that it can bring more of this activity under the auspices of the company, where it hopes to exert some regulatory influence (and, one would suspect, be able to collect more of the revenue that flows through sports-betting apps).

Despite the blog post’s efforts to emphasize protecting esports integrity, though, Needham and Riot have not addressed any of the social issues that have been caused by the growth of sports betting throughout the country. An NCAA-sponsored study, for example, found that increasing harassment of college athletes in the United States can be primarily attributed to anger and disappointment related to sports betting. This dynamic may be even worse along gendered lines; some evidence suggests that betting-related harassment disproportionately targets women. Riot has yet to state if it will take any particular precautions to mitigate potential harms caused by sports betting; most of its emphasis so far appears to be assuaging fears about match fixing or other threats to esports integrity.

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