Crime in Esports – Criminal Law Considerations

Abstract

The phenomenon and development of modern digital technologies put imprint on almost all life spheres, including sports. Over the past years, there have been a rapid development of a new sport and a new direction of the sports business, i. e., esports, which, unlike traditional sports, is causally relating to information and telecommunication technologies and intellectual property. The Regulations on esports adopted in 2020 by the Ministry of Sports of the Russian Federation, expanded the concept of sport by officially recognizing esports as an independent sport. Today, esports is a fast-growing high-tech industry with an ever-growing global audience and a significant number of computer companies and stakeholders involved, which are usually in fierce competition with each other. Nevertheless, despite rapid transformation into the mainstream, this industry is faced with both traditional criminal law concerns and specific inherent to esports problems, which can hinder its potential growth. All the aforesaid suggests that the boundaries of sport are constantly expanding likewise the legal relations regulated in the digital era by criminal legislation, as well as the related law enforcement issues. At the same time, it must be acknowledged that the current legislation is imperfect, and the issues of countering illegal methods of influencing the results of computer sports competitions and electronic doping, fraud and corruption, as well as criminal protection of copyright and related rights, problems of the ratio of criminal and non-criminal in esports are understudied by experts.