Riot reportedly investigating possible match-fixing in the NACL

According to several reports that surfaced in the last few hours, Riot Games reportedly opened an investigation about possible match-fixing in the NACL earlier this week. Specifically, it concerns a “throw” in the NA Challengers League Spring Split promotion matches.

According to reports, it is very likely that many LCS Tier 2 players are involved in this match-fixing. As a result, it seems that all the problems of this type that are unfortunately very common in the Asian region are coming to the US and NA.

Likewise, there are still no exact details regarding this situation, but reports highlight that one player would have made a “very large bet” before starting his game.

Reports claim Riot is investigating possible match-fixing in NACL

According to renowned LoL esports journalist Sander Hove, Riot Games is investigating some NACL players for a possible match-fixing case.

[Sources] Riot is conducting an investigation into the alleged throwing of a series in the LCS Challengers League Promotion Tournament#LCS #NACL #PathtoLCS pic.twitter.com/9Fj1KYaA6y

— LCS Eevee (@LCS_Eevee) September 5, 2023

In the report, LCS Eevee, as this journalist calls himself on Twitter, mentions that Riot Games is investigating the matches of Supernova, a very popular organization in the NA Challengers scene. Supernova lost to LiT in the NACL 2024 Spring Promotion Upper Bracket Final 2-3. However, in the Lower Bracket Final match, they were swept by Mirage Alliance (0-3).

Supernova finished in 9th place in the NACL regular season and, in the promotion tournament, they failed to complete their goal, so they officially said goodbye to the league.

Reports claim that in the draws for the NACL 2024 Spring Promotion games, one of the Supernova players randomly selected a champion without his audio activated. Moreover, this was not the first time it happened, as, in the series against LiT, some cases of “mistakes” in the selection of champions were also seen.

The reality is that it is unclear whether this is a simple error or a case of match-fixing. However, Riot Games has many resources to verify all bets placed on matches, so it is more than likely that we will soon know the truth.

Match-fixing – An Evil of Esports

While it is true that match-fixing is seen, even in traditional sports, it is much more frequent in esports than we might think.

However, these situations occur (unfortunately) in Asian regions, where we have observed many of these cases. However, it may have come to the NACL, and when the league is undergoing many changes and popularity is not very high, it may be another difficult obstacle to overcome.

Finally, we hope this is a simple mistake and not match-fixing, as we could be facing a big stain on the NACL, which we saw was “taking off” at the end of the season.

Header: Lolesports | Riot Games