Faze Clan Owner Admits He Ran CS:GO Skin Game Website
No stranger to controversy, FaZe Clan owner Ricky Banks could well be in hot water with esports authorities once again after revealing in a BADNWZ podcast that he, along with other individuals, had created a skin gambling site in the Caribbean and used the funds it generated to help pay for FaZe Clan’s CS:GO team.
Counter-Strike skin gambling has been around pretty much since the first days of CSGO and the problem with it, is that in the past some sites have not been operating legally. Firstly, the market is not regulated and of equal concern was the fact that with no regulation, no safeguards were put in place to stop minors from gambling skins when underage.
While now there are Counter-Strike betting sites where you can gamble skins legally and in clearly regulated fashion, whether the site Mr Banks refers to in the interview fitted that criteria is not immediately clear, although in the interview he does claim that the site was legitimate.
“Grey Area”
In his podcast, Mr Banks explained that skins betting was a “grey area” and that the reasoning behind the decision was that the team currently wasn’t making enough money to afford a top-level CSGO team, which Banks claimed would cost him around a “million dollars”.
However, it is how Mr Banks explained how the business was set up that has the potential to cause him problems further down the line. After identifying Antigua as the place to locate the business, as gambling sites are legal in the country, Banks flew privately to the island with his team and explained that he;
“…sat down with the gut who runs the country and basically paid him a hundred thousand dollars and he gave us the license.”
Mr Banks also confirmed that the website only ran for a few months before he closed it down and that at one point, the site was earning the team around $200,000 a day through its transactions, which he claimed were entirely legitimate.
Promotion
Although Mr Banks did not confirm which site it was that he set up, many on a Reddit discussion believe they know the site and somewhat problematically, it appears that this site was recommended by FaZe Clan players for others to use to gamble on CSGO Skins.
In the past other personalities have landed in hot water because of this. In 2016, Trevor Martin (Tmartn) and Tom Cassel (Syndicate) were both involved in controversy for not disclosing a site they heavily promoted on their site that allowed skins betting, was actually owned by them.
Also in 2016, FaZe Clan Owner FaZe_Rain issued a statement to address the rumors that the team members “do not and have never owned any part of {CSGO] Wild” the name of the site that fans have alleged is the one set up by Mr Banks and his team.
Guidelines
The Federal Trade Commission has clear guidelines on endorsements and part of the lengthy legal document is that owners must disclose whether they have an interest, ownership or otherwise in another site that they are recommending.
It also flies in the face of game maker Valve’s ambition to be far stricter in how skins are used and gambled in the industry.
In his defense, Banks claimed that the website was run “legally with permits” and that “we were the only ones doing it legitimately.”
This issue is likely to rumble on over the coming days and weeks. So far Valve have not yet commented.
Since: August 10, 2015
