FaZe Banks Reveals that he Operated a CS:GO Gambling Website that made $200,000 a Day
Cover Image Courtesy: TMZ Sports | Thumbnail Image Courtesy: FaZe Banks
- FaZe Banks publicly admits to having run a CS:GO skin gambling website with an objective of buying a CS:GO team.
- The skin gambling website which was set up in Antigua generated around $200,000 a day.
- He claimed that they were the only ones doing it legitimately.
Sometimes the past catches up to the present real fast, as Richard Bengtson a.k.a FaZe Banks, owner of the popular esports organization FaZe Clan revealed that the organization had actually run a CS:GO skin gambling website with the objective of buying a CS:GO team.
In the 11th episode of a podcast called ‘BADNWZ’, both Taav Cooperman (Manager & Business Developer at FaZe Clan) and FaZe Banks spoke at length about a lot of things, but the spotlight of the whole podcast was Banks speaking about how they entered the business of skin gambling.
“Around this time Counter-Strike was kinda the game and there were a lot of these like gambling websites with skins,” said Banks, as he went on to explain what skins were and how there was a whole online market dedicated to them.
“So, with that people started creating these gambling sites where you (users) could gamble with these skins. It is kinda like a grey area because it is a skin in a game and there is no actual real-life value to it.”
Banks went on to state that, “with these kids, I came up with this idea for a different way to do it (gamble skin) and we branded it the right way," revealing his motivation behind all of this to be able to earn enough money in order to buy a CS:GO team. He claims that through this website, they were making around $200,000 per day.
The 28-year-old went on to give details about the business stating that he set the whole thing up in Antigua, “It’s an island in the Caribbean, where running a gambling website is completely legal if you have the permits and stuff. So we flew there privately, sat down with the guy who runs the country, basically paid him like a $100,000 and he gave us the license.”
He provided a short description of how life on the island was like and how they managed to run the website in a regulated manner for a few months before shutting it down, claiming that they were the only ones doing it legitimately and that there are organizations earning big money still doing it today.
During the conversation of how the organization started and operated this skin gambling website, Banks used the word “we” to describe the whole operation, but never mentioned how many people were involved with him or who they were. A couple of other things which were not mentioned were the name of the gambling website and when exactly did this whole business take place.
Jake Lucky who is the creator and a host of the YouTube channel ‘Esports Talk’, had tried to expose the same back in 2016 but claims to have received a lot of hate and backlash from the community, as he tweeted that “NO ONE believed me and all they did was deny deny deny.”
He also went on to make a Twitter post with a collection of screenshots showcasing a skin gambling website ‘CS:GO Wild BETA’, being used by a few FaZe Clan members. However, he did not explicitly name the website as the gambling site in question.
Even Jarek “DeKay” Lewis admitted that this was the first thing he investigated as a journalist and something that he talked about with Richard Lewis repeatedly.
What was alleged back in 2015-2016 has actually turned out to be the truth after more than four years. Whether this will affect FaZe Clan or not is yet to be seen, as the community stands divided on this topic.
