Match-fixing suspicions hit LPLOL playoffs as players go public

One day before the publication of this report, on Thursday, two Dream Esports players received Discord messages ahead of their best-of-five quarterfinal against Dominion Goblins. The same anonymous account contacted both, telling them money had already been staked on them to lose and offering them a share of it in return for information.

Both players, midlaner Flávio “BANKAI” Neves and support Duarte “Tochas” Martins Vieira, went public with screenshots after the series, which Dream Esports lost 1-3. “They tried to buy me, and after the game they even tried to 'make fun',” BANKAI wrote on X. “Idk about my team but 100% sure that someone accepted. It is what it is. I hope Riot take out the bet from ERLs.”

In a second post, in Portuguese: “Losing is part of it. But going into a Bo5 knowing one of my players took money to lose on purpose? […] Worse, neither LPLOL nor Riot do anything about it.”

Tochas posted his own screenshots half an hour later. “Don't want to undervalue GOB's win, but yeah, this is disgusting and should be public.”

A Discord account under the name “CSS WALLBANGER” opened a conversation with Tochas at 18:00 on match day, around an hour before the series.

It introduced itself as “an experienced bettor across several esports,” said it had noticed “several funny games in LPLOL last edition,” and asked whether Tochas was “aware of all this" and whether “this kind of information” could be obtained “for the right reasons.” It suggested they "talk in another format to discuss financial literacy."

It also offered a specific piece of market data: four hours before the match, it said, the odds on Dream's opponent had shortened from 2.4 to 1.4. “This isn't normal or organic. I'm nobody for you to worry about, I just want partnerships, win-win.”

The same account also tried to convince BANKAI, who was contacted separately from his support. In screenshots he provided directly to Sheep Esports, the anonymous user wrote: “you went from favourites to underdogs very fast” and claimed that at least “14k dollars has already gone in on your game with you losing.”

Rather than asking him to lose, however, the account appeared to be seeking inside information: “I just want a slice of what’s going on… if you actually share the script.” It also described the situation as something broader than a single match: “I’ve already spoken to other players in the Portuguese scene, and clearly this is all one big core.”

The same account came back to BANKAI at 00:14, after the series ended, as the player shared on X. "So buddy, what happened?"

"Bought game, as expected," BANKAI replied. "I already knew we were going to lose." When the account mocked him and his teammate, he answered: "But I don't accept. You can come and offer 10, 20, 30. I don't need your dirty money."

Sheep Esports has not established who is behind the account, and has seen no evidence linking it to any player, staff member or organisation.

Told about the messages sent to Dream's players, “Omni”, a market analyst who monitors esports order books flagged the series to Sheep Esports before it started and found unusual volume across several platforms. The match drew roughly $130,000 on Polymarket and around $120,000 on Kalshi, far above what an LPLOL quarterfinal normally attracts as liquidity. (Polymarket is a commercial partner of Sheep Esports; see the disclosure below.)

On Polymarket, where individual transactions are public, one account placed a single four-figure position. The account was newly created, and that bet is the only one it has ever made. But a fresh account placing one large bet and never trading again is often the pattern a match-fixer would follow. Sheep Esports has found no link between that account and anyone at Dream Esports, or the person who messaged the team's players.

Anyone organising a fix has every reason to spread money across multiple bookmakers and prediction markets at once, so the exposure on any single platform is a fraction of what is really at risk.

Omni says he warned the league before the match. He received no reply. He added that if Riot Games is interested in finding ways to spot match-fixing, they are free to reach out to him through Sheep Esports.

Thursday's series was not the first LPLOL match this season to pair an unexplained betting pattern with a player accusing his own side.

In August, Dream Esports played a best-of-three against Capybara Esports, and lost the first game. It was after that, with Dream a game down and priced as the underdog, that the money arrived. Capybara support Skeid wrote on X that $75,000 was staked on a Dream series win. On Polymarket, a newly created account placed a four-figure bet on the same outcome, withdrew its winnings and never traded again, the same fingerprint as the account that appeared on Thursday's match.

Capybara lost the next two games, and lost the series 1-2. Skeid believes his own AD carry lost the series for Capybara deliberately: "He started speaking 0 and wouldn't even respond to me."

Tochas says that there are a lot more cases. "LPLOL has been a place of match-fixing and players playing for betting rewards for some time now (six months to a year)," he tells Sheep Esports.

This potential match-fixing situation is not a first occurence in ERLs. The largest case remains the Turkish Academy League in 2022, where Riot sanctioned 12 players over what it called a broader betting-related manipulation scheme, with bans running from five months to five years; two others were cleared. Four people in the Greek Legends League were permanently banned in 2020 for colluding to manipulate at least four matches for betting profit. And in July, Rift Legends mid laner Syzyf drew a 12-month suspension after suspicious betting on two of his team's games, though that investigation, run with Sportradar, found no evidence he had manipulated anything, only that he let a close family member bet on matches he played in.

Another popular case never led to a definitive conclusion. Ultraliga suspended Iron Wolves' Chinese imports kylin and 0din in January 2024 after a game in which the pair appeared to throw fights while their three teammates won it anyway. Riot cleared both within a week for insufficient evidence.

The most instructive case is six weeks old in the Benelux ERL. After a 23 July Road of Legends match between Dynasty and Myth Esports, the league referred concerns about two Dynasty players to Riot, which provisionally suspended both. ROL then voided the result, a 2-1 win for Myth, and replayed the match off stream on 28 August, with the investigation still running. Neither party has said what the alleged breach was. But ROL did not wait for a ruling before protecting its own bracket.

Otter Side, current champions of the LPLOL, tell Sheep Esports that their team has reported suspected match-fixing to the Portuguese league on multiple occasions, with other teams making similar reports. According to them, the response has consistently been that Riot is already investigating. Beyond that, they say, nothing happens.

Riot's published anti-match-fixing framework describes machinery built for exactly this. Since 2019 the company has worked with Sportradar, whose Universal Fraud Detection System "monitor[s] global betting markets from over 600 betting operators, including access to individual betting stakes to identify suspicious betting patterns at an account level." Riot says that system covers more than 8000 matches a year across 25 leagues. In 2024 it signed a memorandum of understanding with the International Betting Integrity Association to share integrity information.

Match-fixing, gambling and failure to report, Riot writes, "are amongst the most serious breaches of the Riot Games Esports Global Code of Conduct and are often subject to harsh penalties." Investigations can run for months, "during which provisional suspensions may be imposed to protect the integrity of the competition and prevent further harm to the ecosystem."

The company has moved decisively when it wanted to. In March, the LPL handed Top Esports jungler naiyou a lifetime ban covering every professional and semi-professional competition run by Tencent, TJ Sports and Riot Games worldwide, after his own organisation detected irregular behaviour and handed over its evidence.

Whether a Portuguese quarterfinal commands the same urgency is the open question. Dream Esports are out. If BANKAI is right that a teammate accepted, the players who refused are the ones who paid for it.