Ukrainian Fixing Cases Test the Gold Standard Behind BETER’s ESportsBattle

A Ukrainian cyberfootball player has been convicted of throwing matches in ESports Battle Football, the round-the-clock tournament series produced by betting content provider BETER, testing an integrity model in which one company runs the events, prices the betting on them and monitors them.

BETER holds the Esports Integrity Commission’s Gold Standard. Asked about competitions built that way, ESIC told The Esports Advocate that the structure “creates integrity risks and potential conflicts requiring external scrutiny.”

According to Censor.net, citing Ukraine’s Prosecutor General’s Office, Serhii Kryvenko belonged to a six-person group, made up of an organizer, a co-organizer and four players, that operated from November 2022 to October 2024. Its members bet on predetermined results of ESports Battle Football matches, played on FIFA, at legal and illegal bookmakers, most of them registered in Asian countries.

Prosecutors said Kryvenko took part in four fixed matches: three on Dec. 1, 2022, and one on March 18, 2023. He received 5,000 USDT through a cryptocurrency exchanger for the first three losses and $3,976 for the fourth, for a total of $8,976. He pleaded guilty under a plea agreement and was sentenced in July to two years of restricted liberty, suspended on probation.

A second case followed on Oct. 30. RegioNews reported that the Prosecutor General’s Office had sent an indictment to court against three members of a group accused of fixing cyberfootball matches in 2022 and 2023. According to the prosecutors, the organizer, a 28-year-old Kyiv resident, agreed results with players and paid them to lose so that the rest of the group could win bets.

The investigation reaches beyond the three defendants. Searches were carried out in Spain and Germany in September with the involvement of Interpol, Europol and local police, and phones, computers and handwritten notes were seized. Two more suspects have been notified of suspicion, and the authorities are considering placing them on an international wanted list.

Prosecutors did not name the competition in the second case. They said one member of the group had already been convicted of deliberately losing FIFA matches for betting, and that the verdict is final. Kryvenko’s case matches that description, but the authorities have not named him in connection with the indictment.

Nothing in either case alleges wrongdoing by BETER or ESportsBattle. What the cases raise is a question about the business model.

ESportsBattle is not a conventional league. BETER, which lists ESportsBattle and the table tennis series Setka Cup among its products on its website, organizes the matches, streams them and sells the odds to sportsbooks. The site advertises an in-house trading team of more than 150 traders and a “dedicated integrity team” that monitors all operations. The company that produces the events also prices the betting markets on them and polices their integrity.

BETER joined ESIC as a Tier 1 Anti-Corruption Supporter on May 5, 2025. The release described ESportsBattle as BETER’s flagship, “delivering over 36,000 monthly esports events that are thoroughly monitored 24/7 by BETER’s Integrity team.” A month later, ESIC awarded BETER its Gold Standard after an on-site audit, as previously reported by The Esports Advocate. At the time, BETER Chief Integrity Officer Andrii Nekrutov said the accreditation reflected “the strict measures and unwavering commitment to fair play that we uphold in all ESportsBattle tournaments.”

The fixed matches in Kryvenko’s case took place more than two years before that accreditation, and the group’s activity ended about seven months before BETER joined ESIC.

The 2022 and 2023 incidents predated ESIC’s relationship with BETER. BETER did not report these matters to ESIC at the time because they pre-existed ESIC’s relationship with BETER. ESIC was aware of historical integrity difficulties before the audit.

Asked how it views competitions produced primarily for betting, where the same company produces the events, prices the markets and monitors integrity, the spokesperson said:

That structure creates integrity risks and potential conflicts requiring external scrutiny. It is precisely why ESIC developed the Gold Standard. Our assessment covers safeguards including access controls, surveillance, player and staff conduct, education, reporting and cooperation with ESIC. Internal monitoring alone is insufficient to demonstrate compliance.

The spokesperson said ESIC has engaged with Ukraine’s national platform under the Macolin Convention, the Council of Europe treaty on the manipulation of sports competitions. ESIC said the applicant pays the audit and accreditation costs, separately from any affiliation fees, and that supporter status “does not determine or influence accreditation.” All Gold Standard holders are reviewed annually and can lose the accreditation for non-compliance. ESIC said BETER “has continued to meet the Gold Standard requirements.”

Setka Cup, the other series on BETER’s product list, has faced integrity questions before.

In July 2020, the New Jersey Division of Gaming Enforcement told the state’s sportsbooks to stop taking bets on all table tennis events in Ukraine after a match-fixing alert, “including but not limited to the Setka Cup,” ESPN reported. Colorado suspended betting on Ukrainian table tennis the same day. A Setka Cup spokesperson told ESPN that the two named players who had competed in the series had been suspended, and that its safeguards included lie detector tests for players.

Still unknown are whether BETER’s integrity team or its betting partners flagged the fixed matches at the time, whether the players in either case still compete in ESportsBattle, whether the second case involves ESportsBattle at all, and which court is hearing the indictment.

The Gold Standard was designed for exactly this kind of operation. The question the Ukrainian cases raise is whether an audit of a producer’s own safeguards can detect a fixing ring that places its bets at offshore bookmakers the producer does not see.