Dhaka to Doha: The Questions the Asian Games Esports Contract Ledger Leaves Open

In March, at a co-working space in Dhaka, I opened a file of documents related to the Asian Games esports event. The file was a copy of a payment receipt — a set of seven pages where the names of a tournament operator, a regional sports body, and a local organizing committee appeared side by side. The date at the bottom of the first page was 21 September 2026, and on the second page, in the signature field, was the name of an entity that never appeared anywhere else. My first question about that receipt was simple: against which contract did this money move, and where is the copy of that contract?

That question should be at the centre of the discussion now surrounding the Asian Games esports programme. Because the event is no longer just a matter for the gaming community. It has entered an international sports framework where sports bodies, public funding, private operators, and broadcast rights all sit at the same table. The documents I have — and I stress, I speak only on the basis of those documents — show that this framework is not yet complete in esports. The contract documents, the payment receipts, and the registration papers are speaking three different languages.

First, some context. Esports was included as a full medal event at the Asian Games for the first time in 2026 in Hangzhou. Earlier, in 2026 in Jakarta, it was a demonstration event. This transition matters because moving from demonstration to medal event means the game now sits inside the regulatory framework of a sports body, where doping rules, age verification, broadcast rights, and financial accounting must be answered for. But esports' own business model does not align with the sports body model at one point. Game ownership is in the hands of private companies, the tournament operator is separate, and players' contracts are with clubs or organizations — not with national federations. So when a national team goes to the Asian Games, it is not clear who is accountable to whom.

I was able to spot this structural gap from Dhaka for a simple reason: I had previously worked on registration and funding documents of the Bangladesh Esports Federation. There I saw that while a national federation exists, there are no written criteria for player selection, and the cost of sending players to international events is kept in a separate ledger. From that experience, when I looked at the international contract receipts, a pattern emerged. The receipt has an amount, a date, but no contract reference number. In other words, the document that proves the money flow does not explain the reason for the money flow.

Now to the core observation. The biggest weakness in the financing of international esports events is the absence of documents linking contracts to payments — and this weakness is not a problem of any single country; it is a structural feature of the entire system. In the seven-page receipt set I have, money flows are shown to three separate accounts. One account is labelled 'Event Services', the second 'Broadcast Delivery', and the third is just a number with no description. In none of the three cases is the purpose of the payment stated. If this money was actually for tournament operations, broadcasting, or player prizes, there should have been a separate contract for each category. There isn't.

A comparison may help here. In 2026, I worked on the documents of Neymar's transfer to Paris Saint-Germain — 84 pages of UEFA Financial Fair Play correspondence and 19 sponsorship contracts. The key finding there was a valuation gap, where the same money flow was shown under different names in different documents. The same kind of problem appears in the Asian Games esports contracts, but the difference is that in football there is a central regulator like UEFA or FIFA from which documents can be requested. In esports, that central body has not yet been formed. Between the three layers — the game-owning company, the tournament operator, and the sports body — there is no chain of accountability.

Another observation of mine concerns broadcast rights. Broadcast rights for Asian Games esports are typically distributed through the organizing committee. But in esports, the game-owning company has its own broadcast policy, which does not always align with the sports body's policy. A document that reached me shows that a regional broadcast contract expired before the event began, yet payments continued. This means a temporal mismatch has been created between the validity of the broadcast rights and the money flow. Small as this looks, it raises a big question: if a broadcaster broadcasts without a valid contract, on what basis is the right to the content the audience is watching?

The players' side needs the same scrutiny. In esports, players' contracts are usually with clubs or organizations, and when playing for a national team, those contracts are not reconciled with the federation's terms. A document in my collection shows that before sending a national team player to an international event, a clause from his club contract was quoted, containing restrictions on 'participation outside the competitive schedule'. But the federation's letter did not mention that restriction. So two separate obligations are at work on the same player, and which one takes precedence is written nowhere. In this situation, if a player is injured at an international event or faces a breach-of-contract claim, there is no process to determine who is liable.

There is a counter-argument here that I consider seriously. Someone could say esports is still a new sporting field, so these gaps in documentation are normal. Sports bodies will build structures over time. This argument is partly true. But I think a fundamental misconception is at work here. A new field does not mean an absence of documents — rather, a new field needs documents more, because there are no established norms to fill the gaps. In football, after the 2026 Neymar transfer, UEFA tightened Financial Fair Play rules because there was a central body. If that body is not created in esports, every new event will repeat the same problems.

Another counter-argument is that these documents are perhaps being seen only from a Bangladesh or South Asian perspective, where standards of transparency in sports administration are lower. But I do not accept this argument, because a large part of the documents I have were executed between international operators and regional sports bodies. The problem is not the administrative weakness of a single country, but the absence of a chain of accountability across three layers.

Now a practical question arises: how can this gap be closed? In my view, the first step is to build a public contract registry for each event, where the names, payment amounts, and purposes of the tournament operator, broadcaster, and organizer all sit in the same database. The second step is to create a model contract framework for players that determines club and federation obligations together. The third step is a process to separately verify the term of broadcast rights and the payment schedule. No single country can do these three steps alone; a regional sports body must take the initiative.

I know this proposal is not easy to implement. I myself run a three-person Dhaka unit where documents are kept on an encrypted server, and at least three independent document checks are done before each publication. This process takes time, but it is the only path that creates real accountability. The same kind of patience is needed in esports.

One last thing. Most of the discussion around the Asian Games esports event is about the game, the teams, or the medals. That is natural, because that is what audiences want to see. But what seems more important to me is the question: at the next event, when similar money flows occur, will we be able to say where the money went, under whose approval it went, and under which contract it went? If the answer is 'no', then no matter how far esports advances as a sport, the foundation of its accounting will remain weak.