Take-Two chief says esports gambling could be 'meaningfully positive' for business

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The US Supreme court opened the door to legal esports gambling last week.

Take-Two Interactive chief executive Strauss Zelnick has said that esports gambling in the US—which the Supreme Court opened the door for last week with a law change—could be "meaningfully positive" for the publisher.

The Supreme Court ruling struck down a law that prohibited gambling on sports events, and although it didn't reference esports specifically it's almost inevitable that it will impact the industry, given the continued blurring of boundaries between conventional sports and esports. In an earnings call, Zelnick praised the law change, and said that it's likely to effect gaming "at some point in the relatively near future". That would have a "meaningfully positive impact" on Take-Two, he said.

“We certainly think it’s a good decision, we think there may indeed be an influence, and a meaningfully positive influence, on our business," he said. "However, it’s not in our current sights, we don’t have any expectations right now, [we’re] simply observing that there are potential opportunities in the future. And I’d be very surprised if sports gambling didn’t intersect with the industry at some point in the relatively near future.”

Take-Two owns a 50% stake in the NBA 2K esports league in partnership with the NBA. I imagine that, if esports betting does happen, publishers will want to get in on the act, but the fact that different states will set different laws does complicate things. Let's see how it pans out.

Thanks, gamesindustry.biz.

Samuel Horti
Samuel Horti

Samuel is a freelance journalist and editor who first wrote for PC Gamer nearly a decade ago. Since then he's had stints as a VR specialist, mouse reviewer, and previewer of promising indie games, and is now regularly writing about Fortnite. What he loves most is longer form, interview-led reporting, whether that's Ken Levine on the one phone call that saved his studio, Tim Schafer on a milkman joke that inspired Psychonauts' best level, or historians on what Anno 1800 gets wrong about colonialism. He's based in London.