Présentation
From 18 to 21 June 2026, Cologne hosted the Global Esports Industry Week (GEIW), the leading week for the global esports industry, held this year alongside the IEM Cologne Major, an esports tournament under the Counter-Strike 2 licence. Represented by Pierre-Xavier Chomiac de Sas and Sophie Roman, PCS Avocat was honoured to be invited to speak at the expert workshop organised by the International Games and Esports Tribunal (IGET), for a panel discussion devoted to the role of alternative dispute resolution (ADR) mechanisms in esports disputes.
Esports and Video Game Competitions: The Global Esports Industry Week (GEIW) 2026
Organised by The Esports Radar and the Esports Integrity Commission (ESIC), with ESL FACEIT Group (EFG) as host partner, the second edition of GEIW took place in Cologne following an inaugural edition in Austin, Texas, in 2025. The city simultaneously hosted the IEM Cologne Major, bringing together esports industry stakeholders and fans supporting their teams over four days.
More than 400 executives, legal officers, publishers, organisers and institutional representatives gathered for a packed programme: the ESIC Global Esports Summit, devoted to governance and the sector’s long-term economic sustainability; the IMPACT Live summits on video game development and education; the Esports Leaders Cologne evening; the inaugural Esports Leaders Honours, recognising the sector’s leading figures of the year; and the IGET expert workshop in which we took part.
Organisations in attendance included ESL FACEIT Group, the Esports World Cup Foundation, ENorth Media, MOONTON, NODWIN, Corsair, BLAST, the ESBD, MSI, HEROIC, the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) and AOC. Ralf Reichert, CEO of the Esports World Cup Foundation, and Niccolo Maisto, CEO of EFG, were among the leading speakers. Stephen Hanna, CEO of ESIC, summed up the week’s central theme: integrity, governance and long-term sustainability remain critical priorities for a sector still young in its institutional development.
Our participation in the sessions on the legal dimensions of esports and in the IGET workshop reflects recognition of the work our firm has carried out over the past ten years, both in advising our clients on digital and esports law and through our status as a certified professional mediator.
IGET: A Private Tribunal for Esports
The International Games and Esports Tribunal (IGET) is a non-profit dispute resolution centre, jointly established by the Esports Integrity Commission (ESIC) and the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) Arbitration and Mediation Center, a United Nations body. Launched in 2025 at an online event attended by several hundred participants, IGET is already administering its first arbitration and mediation proceedings — the first published “award” can be viewed at iget.gg.
IGET’s ambition is clear: to become the “CAS of esports” — that is, a single point of entry for all disputes relating to video games and esports, equipped with modern arbitration rules and case-management tools designed for the sector’s specific needs. Its work is structured around two strands: integrity disputes, handled in conjunction with ESIC (cheating, doping, match-fixing), and commercial and intellectual property disputes, handled in conjunction with the WIPO Arbitration and Mediation Center.
The expert workshop held in Cologne was the second edition of this format, a multi-part platform designed to raise awareness of IGET and to present the latest legal developments in the video game and esports sector.
For a sector long shaped solely by the contractual will of publishers, organisers and platforms — terms of use, competition rules, internal charters — the rise of a dedicated arbitral institution marks a significant milestone: that of an ecosystem progressively equipping itself with its own legal architecture, much as the Court of Arbitration for Sport has represented for traditional sport for decades.
Lawyer & Mediator: The Case for ADR in Addressing Esports’ Complex Challenges
We spoke alongside Rodolphe Ruffie-Farrugia, partner at KL Gates, as part of a panel entitled “Protecting the Players from the Players: Esports Integrity Challenges & Solutions.” The purpose of the discussion was to demonstrate, through concrete examples, why alternative dispute resolution mechanisms (mediation, arbitration, conciliation) are particularly well suited to the specific nature of esports disputes.
Why ADR is particularly well suited to esports. Three features of the sector support this view. First, the almost systematically international nature of the relationships between players, clubs, publishers and organisers, which makes identifying a competent state court complex and any resulting judgment often ill-suited to the sector’s realities. Second, the technical complexity of the disputes — anti-cheating, cybersecurity, intellectual property in digital assets — which frequently exceeds the expertise of generalist courts. Finally, the need, in a sector where the same parties collaborate on an ongoing basis (player/club, organiser/publisher, sponsor/event), to preserve the contractual relationship rather than expose it to public, adversarial proceedings.
We nevertheless noted an important limitation under French law: an arbitration clause included in an employment contract is deemed unwritten pursuant to Article L. 1411-4 of the French Labour Code, which reserves jurisdiction over individual employment disputes to the Labour Court (conseil de prud’hommes). The scope of ADR in esports must therefore be carefully assessed according to the legal characterisation of the contract at issue.
Player health and club/player relations. Disputes concerning players’ physical and mental health — overwork, burnout, termination of contract without compensation, the employer club’s safety obligations — often involve sensitive data, sometimes relating to minor players. The confidentiality afforded by mediation protects both the player and the organisation from disproportionate media exposure, while allowing for faster resolution than conventional litigation.
Event security. Liability in the event of an incident during a competition — a cyberattack disrupting a tournament, a security failure involving the organiser, venue, technical providers and sponsors — frequently involves multiple parties with overlapping contractual interests. The cyberattacks that have targeted several esports events in recent years illustrate the need for a rapid, technically competent response, which ADR mechanisms deliver more effectively than conventional litigation, which is structurally slower and public.
Organisers’ handling of cheating. Cheating in esports takes many forms — software-based cheating, pharmacological doping, match-fixing — calling for differentiated responses from organisers. The 2019 Australian case involving six Counter-Strike: Global Offensive players, arrested for match-fixing for betting purposes (with stakes reportedly reaching USD 30,000), remains one of the rare cases to have been brought before a state court. It illustrates the difficulty a conventional judicial system faces in addressing the technical, cross-border conduct specific to esports. Conversely, sanctions imposed by organisers or by ESIC itself — bans, disqualification — call for a fast, specialised challenge mechanism recognised by all industry stakeholders: this is precisely the role IGET intends to play.
This event was an opportunity to reaffirm that PCS Avocat combines long-standing expertise in esports law with Maître Chomiac de Sas’s status as a certified professional mediator — a rare positioning that enables the firm to assist clubs, organisers and publishers both in drafting tailored dispute resolution clauses and in representation before these specialised bodies.
*Pour aller plus loin sur ces problématiques, consultez notre guide sur la protection de la santé des joueurs esportifs et notre analyse du contrat du joueur esportif et de sa relation avec le club
Counter-Strike: IEM Cologne Major and Thrilling Matches
The week concluded on 21 June with the IEM Cologne Major final at the LANXESS Arena, before a packed arena worthy of the city’s reputation as the “Cathedral of Counter-Strike.” Team Falcons claimed its first Major title, winning 3-0 against FURIA. Ilya “m0NESY” Osipov was named tournament MVP, while Finn “karrigan” Andersen secured his second Major title as in-game leader — following the one won with FaZe Clan at the PGL Major Antwerp in 2022 — becoming, at 36, the oldest player to win a Major, ending a long run of lost finals for NiKo and m0NESY.
We would like to thank The Esports Radar, the Esports Integrity Commission and ESL FACEIT Group for their invitation to this expert workshop, as well as Rodolphe Ruffie-Farrugia for the quality of our exchange during the panel discussion.
This week in Cologne confirms, if confirmation were needed, that legal and dispute resolution questions are now fully part of the esports industry’s maturation — a development that PCS Avocat will continue to support and document. For any question relating to the legal structuring of your esports business, the drafting of your contracts, or the handling of a dispute, the PCS Avocat team is at your disposal.
